AMD floored us with the performance (and price) of its Radeon HD 5970, awed us with the 5870's triple-display Eyefinity capabilities, wowed us with the 5850's value, excited us with the 5770's alacrity in a home theater system, impressed us with its mainstream 5750, and intrigued us with the relatively entry-level 5670.
We have written quite a few Radeon HD 5000-series launch reviews over the past few months, and every one of the company's new products has demonstrated serious gaming prowess to its respective price segment.
Every one of them, that is, until now. Enter ATI's Radeon HD 5450. This is not a piece of hardware that targets our gaming audience. But at $50, it's the Radeon HD 5000-series card for the rest of us. I use the term 'us' somewhat loosely here, as I consider myself a gamer. You get the idea, though.

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.
- A Radeon For The Rest Of Us?
- ATI's Radeon HD 5450 Architecture
- Budget Eyefinity
- HTPC And Stream
- Radeon HD 5450: The Reference Card
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark Vantage And Far Cry 2
- Benchmark Results: Crysis And World In Conflict
- Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead And H.A.W.X.
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 2 And DirectX 11
- Anti-Aliasing And Anisotropic Filtering
- Power And Temperature Benchmarks
- Conclusion
Not really, look at the specs. In CrossFire these cards would cost $100 for a total 160 shader cores. They still wouldn't hold a candle to a single $100 5670 when gaming, which has 400 shader cores all by itself.
CrossFiring the 5450 would be a total waste.
This card is built for a whole bunch of users who are actually far more common in real life than overgrown teenage gamers. How about desktop users who want a really quiet low power consumption PC? Maybe one which stays on 24/7 or is fitted into a super slim case? How about HTPC users who want a passively cooled card that has all the video and HD acceleration features without requiring an extra power supply or installing 120mm fans on a case to cool one of the monster 5000 series cards?
I have been waiting for this card since the 5xxx series was announced and so has every home theater enthusiast I know. Few of them are gamers and care only about having a good looking PC that can fit in the living room and play their blu-rays and video libraries with the best PQ and AQ.
As for the article itself - nice going THG. Write an article about a non-gaming card with only gaming benchmarks and tests. Who cares? NOBODY will buy this to play Crysis. How about some video acceleration/CPU use tests with multiple video formats instead? How about getting a non-gamer (unlike the self confessed writer - no offense) who actually knows what we care about?
Whats the point of releasing a new graphics card thats worse than older cards? It runs Dx11 but there's no way it could even run a supported game.
Try refreshing the page. Should be working correctly now!
Not really, look at the specs. In CrossFire these cards would cost $100 for a total 160 shader cores. They still wouldn't hold a candle to a single $100 5670 when gaming, which has 400 shader cores all by itself.
CrossFiring the 5450 would be a total waste.
How do you expect it to handle the increase in temps? Even if you got some good airflow inside the case, that won't be sufficient.
They needed a i7 and 1200W PSU to test this card...
Useless...Either get a good card or stick with integrated.
yeah...its just so all the tests are the same, and aren't being capped by anything...tho they could do it with a 500w
now i'll wait a little more to see how the 5500 will fair.
i hope it will be on par with the 9500gt and will be energy efficient. huhuhu
This is aimed purely at media playback and 2D applications.
I run a number of HTPC's in my home and until this card it has been impossible to get a bitstreamed output over hdmi for bluray playback. This is currently the only card that will do that (that is low power, single slot, and half height)
For that reason alone this should get a 5* or 10/10 rating. And I'll be buying 5 of them!
And please try to remember that graphics cards are not all about frame rated when playing crysis.
and slim, so they could fit in a slim htpc case. or a micro pc you could throw in your backpack or hand bag.
plus you can run eyefinity,
and the fact it runs on such little power you could almost plug it into your neck and run it.
and you dont have the crossfire bridge to worry about for crossfire connection,
im definitly a fan of acasels xfire OC idea. id like to see benches and a review of that infact.
How about cutting manufacturing costs doing the 55->40nm transfer and having the power consumption down.