Hardware Radeon HD 5450 Review: HTPC Heaven?

A £40 graphics card? Surely that's as useful as a chocolate teapot? We take a look at AMD's latest and cheapest Radeon from the HD 5000 series, the HD5450, see how it stacks up against integrated graphics and find out in what situations it might be a great buy.



http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/02/09/radeon-hd-5450-review/1

 

Sexy heatsink!

I still think I'd go for this over the Intel system, and stick an Athlon II X2 in it. More realistically though, the market this card is going for is the upgrade market, not the new build market. People with an old PC kicking around, looking to put it to good use. Good work AMD, now let's see that next IGP!

 

how would you say this compares to an nVidia 9500?

 

Good review - I've got the HD 4550 in my lounge PC hooked up to the TV and I never play games on it - but I watch all my freeview TV through Windows Media Centre. The HDMI out is too important - a single cable to the TV (or to the receiver for audio out, then a single cable back to the TV). Would have been nice to have seen some Flash playback stats as the boy loves BBC iplayer which we use more than Youtube.

Also, and I understand why you didn't do this, would have been nice to see the hybrid crossfire stats as well...

 

idle power consumpion was a little bit of a shock considerig how well the highend stuff does

but overall looks great

 

We don't have one sorry.

 

I can see myself buying a bunch of those for friends and family builds.

 

I can see myself still sticking to my 9600GT.

 

still not quite sure what to think of that card...from reading the review it felt like it filled a gap in the market, but the gap didnt really need to be filled.

and there's a typo in the conclusion(2nd to last para) "price - we fell"

peace

fatman

 

I was looking at this card as a possible upgrade over the onboard on the office PC build in my sig. Its the same price as the HD4650 and 9500GT. For light gaming and video acceleration they would be far better. Guess thats the price of new technology. According to ATI's road map there should be another card getting released that sits between this one and the next highest offering. Any ETA on it?

Tomshardware review compares it to the 9500GT.

 

Love the heatsink on it !

 

Based on this review the HD5450 seems ever so slightly pointless.

It offers nothing more than the integrated HD4200 can muster, yet would add £40 to the build cost if you wanted it for HTPC use only.

For gaming its totally pointless as a HD4650 can be picked up for less and offers alot more performance for your £. Its power consumption also isn't that great when compared to the other systems reviewed (especially when compared to the HD4200 based 785G).

The only purpose I can think its any good for is possibly where a HD4200 isn't good enough, although I do wonder whether the HD5450 itself would be enough in these cases or whether you would have to move up to the HD5570 (HD5670) to get the required performance.

Overall I think this is a VERY dissapointing product especially when you consider the rest of the HD5xxx range (HD5670 is a bit meh as well).

 

HD 4550 is basically the same card without DX11 only faster and cheaper.

 

It does offer more than HD4200 if you are serious about your Blu-ray and HD audio, and if you are, but still want to do a bit of gaming, it's better than the Intel GMA-HD too for the same system price. We never said that it offers that much more for £40: the HD 4650 would be better, but at higher power consumption again, and with no low profile option or UVD 2.2 (only 2.0). We've made clear in the original GMA-HD and 785G features that if the 785G offers enough - if you don't care about HD multi-channel surround sound, and many of us don't - then it's a fantastic price: performance chipset. If you're then very serious about upgrading to super HD surround cinema setup at a later date, a £40 upgrade is nothing compared to the thousands you'll have to pay in amp+speaker costs to make it worth while.

It's power consumption is about 20W more at idle than the 785G and Intel alternatives, true, but like I said - compared to a full HTPC setup that takes hundreds of watts, it's a drop in the ocean. You're not going to need this card unless you're specifically after its features - buy a 785G then.

Tbh I think the 5570 particularly, but the 5670 also, are crappier products for their price: features: performance ratio. At least the 5450 is maxed out on the HTPC for just £40 and offers a little bit of gaming for those just considering the IGP option. It's that step up: for the same platform cost as Intel you can buy AMD+GPU.

HD 4550 is exactly the same same: 80 stream processors, but again without UVD 2.2. We're not talking a pure gaming card here, which we made clear in the conclusion, so it offers even less at more power consumption over the 785G.

 

+1 - power draw is VERY important when it's left on for so long - and power draw = heat = noise in a lounge environment...

Gotta say tho - I replaced a X1950XTX with my HD4550 - just realised I never play games on that machine, and once you understand your useage habits you are free to buy accordingly...

 

As many have said the main appeal of this card is purely it's power draw, low operating temperatures and DX11.

 

I'd just get an IGP if that was the only concern. No DirectX 11 content is benefited from such a slow GPU.

 

That is true, and to be really honest, there really isn't any appeal to this card.

Hope the low end HD6xxxx will be better eh?

 

Thanks Bindi for taking the time to respond to my rant (sorry I realise my post came across a bit grumpy - I don't like doing performance reviews at work...).

I see where you are coming from with your reply although I think in this case, the times where this card would actually shown an advantage over either the 785G or the HD4550(70) would be few and far between. I do admit however that these cases can and do exist.

What I don't really get with this card is why it exists as a discrete card at all. To be honest I think ATI would have been better off using this as the IGP whilst the HD55XX series should really be a 200 shader part to bridge the gap between the IGP and the HD5670.

Depending in price I think the HD5570 could either be quite good or not. It seems to be just a downclocked HD5670 with GDDR3 memory.

Overall I think ATI got the top end just right, the mid range down to a T but the bottom rungs seem to have lost their way a bit.

 

A DiaplayPort would indeed be useless.