Manufacturer: AMD Price: $ N/A US Author: Steve Date: 02/03/2010

[ Power Consumption & Temperatures ]

While the Radeon HD 5450 may not have been very impressive when measuring gaming performance, the power consumption figures are quite good. When under load the Radeon HD 5450 did use 10% less power than the GeForce GT 220, though it is worth mentioning that more often than not the Radeon HD 5450 was much more than 10% slower than the GeForce GT 220. The same can be said about the Radeon HD 4650, as the Radeon HD 5450 consumed 22% less power under load but was also more often than not much more than 22% slower. The heatsink and fan setup featured on our review sample was very low budget, and we hope that AMD’s partners can come up with far more impressive solutions. Despite the low power consumption levels of the Radeon HD 5450, our sample still ran rather hot, as it almost reached 60 degrees when under load. This made the Radeon HD 5450 hotter than the Radeon HD 4650 and GeForce GT 240 graphics cards, both of which did feature upgraded coolers.

<- Previous Page Table of Contents Introduction The Card Test System Specs & 3Dmark Vantage Test: Company of Heroes, Crysis Warhead Test: Far Cry 2, Unreal Tournament 3 Test: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Street Fighter IV Test: World in Conflict Soviet Assault, Wolfenstein Overclocking Performance >>> Power Consumption & Temperatures <<< Conclusion Next Page ->

Threefeet

Posted on: 02/16/2010 03:12 AM I actually really enjoyed reading that review, weirdly enough. Why on earth did they send it to you Steve?!

Steve Posts: 76 Joined: 2010-02-08

Posted on: 02/16/2010 10:07 AM Well we cover all new products, even the unexciting ones

johnMarsh Posts: 2 Joined: 2010-02-19

Posted on: 02/20/2010 05:29 AM If you've been paying attention to the recent Radeon launches, then you know there's a lot more to like than just gaming performance: the Eyefinity multi-monitor support and Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio over a protected audio path features mentioned above actually carry over across all members of the 5000-series seen thus far. Anyone excited by those value-adds thus far will be happy to see that they are once again exposed on today's replacement of the Radeon HD 4350 and 4550 cards. Let's take a closer look at the new Radeon HD 5450 and draw some conclusions about how well it serves that low-end discrete audience. We know it's not a gaming card, but we cant help ourselves; we'll even check out gaming performance for the sake of being thorough.

Steve Posts: 76 Joined: 2010-02-08

Posted on: 02/20/2010 07:00 AM Thanks for the feedback John. I have been paying attention to the recent Radeon launches as I have covered them all and will be covering the new Radeon HD 5830 this week in fact. The conclusion did discuss the benefits of the ATI Radeon HD 5450 such as Eyefinity on certain models. While both Eyefinity and Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio over HDMI are nice features I still felt that the Radeon HD 5450 was far too expensive. I give my honest opinion to try and protect the reader/potential buyer.

Gayle

Posted on: 04/07/2010 12:26 AM It would be good if you could include benchmarks for the current onboard graphics when doing these low end card reviews. It would be usefull to get a baseline - what do you get for your $50-60 over the onboard graphics. Otherwise good review.

Mel

Posted on: 05/22/2010 12:59 PM I'm shopping for a new home computer. I'm not a gamer, but I am looking at computers which have one of these low end graphics cards included as part of the preassembled package. I found your review helpful because it confirmed what I had expected, that these cards are too slow for today's games but probably won't add much of anything to a non-gamer's experience. I suspect including these cards is more of a marketing tool, to suggest to buyers that they are getting a more sophisticated computer because it has a seperate graphics card rather than integrated graphics. Anyway, thanks for the review. It was very useful to me.

Dave

Posted on: 06/29/2010 10:33 PM I just bought this 5450 card for my new Dell. I bought a splitter for the monitor but for some reason I can't get it to *spread the screen* over both of them. It simply outputs the same on both monitors. I can't find any help anywhere. Any thoughts, since you guys seem like experts? Thanks.

Supacon Posts: 1 Joined: 2010-07-14

Posted on: 07/14/2010 07:32 AM I'm really curious as to weather the card that you reviewed (with VGA, DVI, and HDMI) actually can support three displays. I know that officially, only models with a displayport support Eyefinity, but I just want to connect three independent monitors for office use - not for gaming. I'd like to pass audio through from the HDMI port to an HDTV, while using a DVI and VGA monitor at the same time. Thus far NOBODY that has reviewed one of these cards has tested this!

Steve V

Posted on: 10/14/2010 03:16 PM I bought the ati radeon hd 5450 and i can say im quite happy with it. I play alot of video games that i have purchased off of steam. It runs borderlands, left for dead 2, street fighter 4 ,star wars the force unleashed, and mass effect 2 all with no problems what so ever ..I wouldnt call this a crappy gaming card, maybe not the best out there but damn good for the cash and if u would want to go bigger you could always crossfire!