ATI Radeon HD 5450: Eyefinity And HTPCs For Everyone?

Power And Temperature Benchmarks

Let's shift our perspective from games to power usage.

We can see the Radeon HD 5450 uses a bit less power than the Radeon HD 4550 and slightly less than the GeForce 210, despite the new card's vastly superior gaming performance. We also see that a higher power draw is the price that the Radeon HD 4650 demands for its gaming performance. But in the big scheme of things, a 43W increase under load isn't bad at all.

All of these temperatures are acceptable, but the new Radeon HD 5450 fares particulalry well for a passively-cooled card. It's notable that the GeForce 9500 GT is a Gigabyte model fitted with a beefy aftermarket cooler, and this explains its ability to keep load temperatures so very low. The GeForce 210 makes a great showing here, but it is the only card in the bottom three that sports an active fan cooler instead of a passive unit.

Contributor

Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.