AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5450 Video Card Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5450 Video Card Review-- AMD's lowest-end discrete GPU to support DX11 is being launched today at $49-$59 MSRP, the ATI Radeon HD 5450. We will give you all the official information on this new video card, plus some power and temperature testing and a simple apples-to-apples DX11 game test using DiRT 2.

The ATI Radeon HD 5450 is not meant to provide the best gaming experience, but it does bring DX11 API support and other features like Eyefinity (albeit useless to gamers) down to the $50 price point. This means that AMD now has a DX11 GPU in every market segment, while the competition simply does not.
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Nice and cool. Thanks for the review. Seems like a good backup card for me.
 
Meh...the 4450 is faster...a little let down...was hoping for a halved 5670. 200 Pixel shaders, and a 64-bit bus
 
perfect for building computers for friends and co-workers that dont game at all and want hardware accellerated video.

Im definatly going to be recomending these.
 
This makes seven discrete DX11 cards from AMD so far, I think. I'm impressed there's DX11 *and* EyeFinity on a $49 card, makes a great non-gamer card for building new machines with.



iTYPE said:
That's not a review, it's a two page fucking add.
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You mean they should do like every other site and bench it against GTX295 and 5970s and in the end go "it doesn't compare to these so it's a bad card don't buy it"? No, they should look at it for what it is - a low profile low power low performance megabudget card, and say that "yes, it plays DX11 games if you cut everything down but don't expect too much".
 
anandtech did a better review:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3734&p=1

Their most interesting conclusion is that it is near identical to a 4550 except it has a slightly faster 650Mhz core clock vs the 600Mhz of the 4550 yet the 4550 consistently beats it in games. Hence clock for clock the 4000 series is quicker then the 5000 series.

Was actually of interest to me as I am looking for a dirt cheap card to let my nieces old machine play a little sims 3, think the 4550 is still the winner there.
 
iTYPE said:
That's not a review, it's a two page fucking add.
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This was not a typical review per se, $50 cards we don't spend a lot of time on, information is posted so you know what the 5450 is, and some power, temp and DX11 performance data.
 
iTYPE said:
That's not a review, it's a two page fucking add.
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This is [H]ardOCP....why should Steve and Kyle spend time reviewing a card that won't be useful to the majority of the site's audience? Most of us look for a card that can play, any if not all, games at 1680x1050 or higher. It was stated as being an HTPC card and not much more...end of story.
 
Just ordered one for the work pc.

instead of dualscreen setup, 3 screens, there is simply not enough desktop space with 2 screens..... 3x19" is simply <3 or 20". nothing bigger for work oriented setups is reccomended, used to have matrox but well, it didnt have capabilities to do simple simple 3d... :S
 
For low end cards like this, could you include a clarkdale/h55 or h57 system using the integrated graphics in the charts, since they are going after the same HTPC market?
 
Did they have to make the heatsink that wide though? Can you bend it or shave it off so you can fit it into one slot?
 
Thanks Kyle and Steve;

I build machines for CS4 Users (Photoshop). They don't need anything high end. Just 2 Video Outputs (DVI). I try not to put cards with Fans on them. Asking for trouble later (dust buildup).

Cheap and does the job.

DM
 
Dataman said:
Thanks Kyle and Steve;

I build machines for CS4 Users (Photoshop). They don't need anything high end. Just 2 Video Outputs (DVI). I try not to put cards with Fans on them. Asking for trouble later (dust buildup).

Cheap and does the job.

DM
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Ummm just a question, I'm pretty sure CS4 can utilize AMD / NV SPs to enhance the work flow, why not get something more power full, like a 5670
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
Ummm just a question, I'm pretty sure CS4 can utilize AMD / NV SPs to enhance the work flow, why not get something more power full, like a 5670
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all depends on if that cs4 user has a processor(s) that can handle cs4 without needing hardware accel for rendering.. though i can see this card being used more in the business market that requires multi-display a lot more then the retail consumer market.. i mean hell.. 50 dollars for a card that supports triple display's or 500+ dollars for a matrox or firegl, or even a tesla card.. what do you think they would choose? lol this card will definitely benefit the non gaming multi-tasking market for sure..
 
Great review. Short, sweet and to the point. I would like to see how this compares to a low-end nvidia, like a 9400gt.
Though, the silent factor is huge.
 
Great card for family member PCs, I'm sure it beats integrated video. I hate buying stuff for family members that has fans on it, they always die on these cheapie cards.
 
MrLonghair said:
Did they have to make the heatsink that wide though? Can you bend it or shave it off so you can fit it into one slot?
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Don't worry they will have single slot editions coming, altho the reference single slot isn't passive, some company probably has a few chunks of metal laying around that would do for that card. Take a look at some pics here (and also a sneak peek at a card that will be a little more up to the task of running games while still being half-height :D): http://www.erodov.com/forums/ati-launches-radeon-hd-5450-hd-5570-a/29927.html


5570 Specs (half height PCB, active cooling):
Trannies: 627M
GPU: 650MHz
SPs: 400
GFLOPS: 520
Memory: 900MHz DDR3
Bandwidth: 28.8GB/s
Power (Idle/Load): 9.69/42.7W
TMUs: 20
Texture Fillrate: 13 GTexels/s
ROPs: 8
Pixel Fillrate: 5.2 GPixels/s
 
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sirmonkey1985 said:
all depends on if that cs4 user has a processor(s) that can handle cs4 without needing hardware accel for rendering.. though i can see this card being used more in the business market that requires multi-display a lot more then the retail consumer market.. i mean hell.. 50 dollars for a card that supports triple display's or 500+ dollars for a matrox or firegl, or even a tesla card.. what do you think they would choose? lol this card will definitely benefit the non gaming multi-tasking market for sure..
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I assume that a card would be beneficial even for an i7, considering the type of work it is.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
all depends on if that cs4 user has a processor(s) that can handle cs4 without needing hardware accel for rendering.. though i can see this card being used more in the business market that requires multi-display a lot more then the retail consumer market.. i mean hell.. 50 dollars for a card that supports triple display's or 500+ dollars for a matrox or firegl, or even a tesla card.. what do you think they would choose? lol this card will definitely benefit the non gaming multi-tasking market for sure..
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I'm looking at getting a 3rd monitor and was going to have to get a pci card or get a new 5xxx card for it. PCI cards are about 50 or so bucks for anything that I can trust not to fail on me so this looks like a perfect solution. I used to game but I don't have time anymore. So long as this little baby can push 5760x1080 pixels I don't care if it sucks at gaming.
 
Whats with the Venus Fly Trap heatsink?

It doesn't look very conducive to good airflow... I suppose if it doesn't run very hot it shouldn't matter.
 
Kyle, is that specific card with that huge 'sink actually for sale? :confused:
 
I like to see low end reviews, and since this is the site I trust, I'm glad [H] does them.
 
Looks like AMD owns DX11.
Time to sell your nVidia stocks if your foolish enough to still have them.
 
I thought Eyeinfinity *required* a DP port - which I don't see. If it does do triple monitors and the drivers are decent I'd order quite a few of them as all of the accounting firms I take care of run 2/3/4 monitors. Right now I'm using the Matrox Mxxx/Pxxxx series as they work well but they are very expensive(~$350 minimum), but the drivers work well. The last HP Z400s I ordered came with Quadro FX380s that had all kinda of issues with running the primary monitor in portrait mode would cause Quickbooks Pro 2008-2010 not to launch with any of the drivers available. In any case for $50 and triple monitors alone it is a steal.
 
MrLonghair said:
This makes seven discrete DX11 cards from AMD so far, I think. I'm impressed there's DX11 *and* EyeFinity on a $49 card, makes a great non-gamer card for building new machines with.


You mean they should do like every other site and bench it against GTX295 and 5970s and in the end go "it doesn't compare to these so it's a bad card don't buy it"? No, they should look at it for what it is - a low profile low power low performance megabudget card, and say that "yes, it plays DX11 games if you cut everything down but don't expect too much".
Click to expand...

I was hoping they'd pit up against a 9600gt or something close.
 
So I want to put together a silent PC. No gaming. Basically I want it to be excellent at video decoding (DXVA) + some GPGPU computing for future encoding of video files

Does this card do it?
 
amertrash said:
I thought Eyeinfinity *required* a DP port - which I don't see. If it does do triple monitors and the drivers are decent I'd order quite a few of them as all of the accounting firms I take care of run 2/3/4 monitors. Right now I'm using the Matrox Mxxx/Pxxxx series as they work well but they are very expensive(~$350 minimum), but the drivers work well. The last HP Z400s I ordered came with Quadro FX380s that had all kinda of issues with running the primary monitor in portrait mode would cause Quickbooks Pro 2008-2010 not to launch with any of the drivers available. In any case for $50 and triple monitors alone it is a steal.
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I have alot of users at work running triple screens too. We've used both nvidia and ati cards to do it. With Xp its quite easy, and you can even mix and match card brands, usually using an onboard intel vga along with a dual head nvidia card, or onboard ati chipset video + an add in ati card with dual head.

For vista, all the video cards have to be the same brand/driver to work. kinda a pain.

Windows 7 is back to the mixed easyness, and even plain old PCI cards work.

You don't need eyefinity or matrox for business environments with multiple screens unless theres something 3d involved, maybe CAD or something might need it. My users are just in Office and some browser based apps, and an email client. For them its easy, we;ve been doing it since 2004 with plain jayne cards.

Did I just say plain jayne? lol
 
MrLonghair said:
This makes seven discrete DX11 cards from AMD so far, I think. I'm impressed there's DX11 *and* EyeFinity on a $49 card, makes a great non-gamer card for building new machines with.





You mean they should do like every other site and bench it against GTX295 and 5970s and in the end go "it doesn't compare to these so it's a bad card don't buy it"? No, they should look at it for what it is - a low profile low power low performance megabudget card, and say that "yes, it plays DX11 games if you cut everything down but don't expect too much".
Click to expand...

The data for other cards is already there, there is no need to rebench everything, its just a matter of putting it all together into perspective for the viewers to see on a single graph/page. The higher end cards probably don't belong in the comparison, but a fewer same price point cards would have been nice to see. While many of us viewers of the site may not use this card, we do however build PCs for family and friends who may use something like this.

Anyway, its up to [H] to spend time on what it feels is worth it. I am not complaining, just really putting it out there. :p
 
Great review? Hardly. The one from canucks at least had some cpu usage numbers for the various non game (hd video, flash) tasks. Anand focused on the one potential weakpoint and compared temps/power to the competing NV lineup (220).

We all know this card doesn't cater to gamers...at all. Where it fits best is for users like myself w/ a cheap HTPC currently powered by a 2400XT that can barely handle 720p (1080p's out of the question). For $50 I get to see 1080p video's and probably lower temps while definitely lowering noise.

Now of course I'm not running a dual core phenom, core 2, or some other uber chip. There sits a humble Athlon 64 3500+ that NEEDS all the assistance it can get from a GPU to process big video wo/ stuttering. I've yet to see a review that uses a single core cpu, let alone something slow.

I want to know what it will do for it's intended user, not someone pairing this thing w/ a core i7 and playing Crysis @ 1920x1080p. Some of these "reviews" are completely useless. I suppose I should be thankful. If it wasn't for a few of you, I'd be looking at pie charts and bar graphs w/ numbers pulled from the sky.
 
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