AMD Radeon HD 6450 Review: Caicos Cometh

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AMD populates the entry-level tier with its new Radeon HD 6450, based on the Caicos graphics processor. Does this board have what it takes to stand out in the crowded sub-$100 market and vie for a spot in your next home theater PC?

HD Video Quality: HQV 2.0 Benchmark

While we recently reviewed a wide spectrum of Radeon and GeForce cards using the HQV 2.0 HD video quality benchmark, we retested the following cards using newer drivers.

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HQV Benchmark version 2.0 Results (out of 210 possible)
Row 0 - Cell 0 GeForce GT 220GeForce GT 430Radeon HD 6450Radeon HD 5550Radeon HD 5450
Test Class 1:Video Conversion8787898989
Test Class 1: Noise and Artifact Reduction2020444444
Test Class 3: Image Scaling and Enhancements3030303015
Test Class 4: Adaptive Processing2020777
Totals:157157170170155

The good news is that the Radeon HD 6450 handles the same visual quality settings as the Radeon HD 5550, and delivers the same HD video quality result. To our surprise, the GeForce GT 220 and GT 430 properly handled all of the tested video cadences, something many Nvidia cards demonstrated a problem with in our last review. Kudos to the GeForce driver team for fixing these issues that we previously identified.

To summarize, the Radeon HD 5450 loses points because it is not powerful enough to handle compression artifact de-blocking. The GeForce GT 220 and GeForce GT 430 also lose points for a lack of this feature and skin-tone correction, but gain some points because of their ability to perform real-time contrast enhancements.

In the final analysis, the Radeon HD 6450 and Radeon HD 5550 take the lead in this price segment when it comes to HD video playback quality, with very good noise and compression artifact reduction.

Don Woligroski
65 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mikenygmail
    AMD is destroying Nvidia in every possible way, and it's only a matter of time before AMD catches up to and surpassed Intel again!
    Reply
  • aznguy0028
    Toms, when are you going to fix your thumbs up/down rating thing?
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    mikenygmailAMD is destroying Nvidia in every possible way, and it's only a matter of time before AMD catches up to and surpassed Intel again!hmm... that's not exactly the impression I got after actually reading the review. Maybe you should try do the same. So Nvidia is getting destroyed because an ultra low-end discrete graphics card from AMD offers decent HTPC performance in comparison to the GT430? lol... And where did that thing about Intel come from?

    Anyway, I would argue that gaming performance definitely isn't at the top of peoples priority list when purchasing a card in this price range. People tend to purchase $60 cards for low power, cool, and quiet media PC operation. And at least in this category the HD6450 offers solid competition for the GT430.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    aznguy0028Toms, when are you going to fix your thumbs up/down rating thing?
    Still waiting on the French dev team to let me know when it's going to unbreak that feature that previously worked fine ;-)
    Reply
  • rolli59
    Nice to see such a big performance leap on the low range cards.
    Reply
  • ScrewySqrl
    It would have been interesting to add your i5-2500K on its own to the comparison chart. The HD3000 has been favorably compared to the 5450 in the past, so how would it compare with the new 6450?
    Reply
  • machvelocy
    just curious... will there be "hybrid crossfire" when this card is paired by a llano?
    Reply
  • Jarmo
    So this doesn't require a power connector? Because that's a big thing when suggesting a replacement card for a couple of years old supermarket PC with an unknown but underpowered power supply. Seems this would fit the bill, being low-power, cheap & quiet.
    Reply
  • mikenygmail
    dragonsqrrlhmm... that's not exactly the impression I got after actually reading the review. Maybe you should try do the same. So Nvidia is getting destroyed because an ultra low-end discrete graphics card from AMD offers decent HTPC performance in comparison to the GT430? lol... And where did that thing about Intel come from?Anyway, I would argue that gaming performance definitely isn't at the top of peoples priority list when purchasing a card in this price range. People tend to purchase $60 cards for low power, cool, and quiet media PC operation. And at least in this category the HD6450 offers solid competition for the GT430.
    Maybe you should try not making baseless assumptions. Nvidia's graphics cards are overpriced and weaker than AMD's at just about every possible price point. The GTX 550 Ti is a failure, and as you pointed out yourself, even this new AMD HTPC offering offers solid competition for the GT430.

    It was totally ridiculous for tomshardware to post the "Best Graphics Card for the Money" article the day before the AMD 6990 article, (to exclude AMD's new flag ship card) and then even more ridiculous to title the article "AMD Radeon HD 6990 4 GB Review: Antilles Makes (Too Much) Noise." This site obviously favors Nvidia and is paid well to do so, I'm just leveling the playing field a bit.

    Also, don't use "lol" and limit your "..." usage, it makes you look bad.
    Reply
  • mikenygmail
    Minor correction of my first post: AMD is destroying Nvidia in every possible way, and it's only a matter of time before AMD catches up to and surpasses Intel again!
    Reply