ATI Radeon HD 5450: Eyefinity And HTPCs For Everyone?

[shreeharsha]

Resolution 1280x1024 has a aspect ratio of 5:4 (not 4:3) more squarish. I have a same resolution monitor (Sony 19") & I love it. It's already 3 years now, my next monitor must be at least 24" (16:9 aspect ratio).

 

[tecmo34]

[citation][nom]skora[/nom]How selfish you all are thinking THG only does gaming cards!!!! When ATI cuts the hardware (shaders/ROPs) to the bone, its not about gaming. Its for the HTPC and multi-monitor office crowd and thats it. It's a niche card and looks to do that admirably.[/citation]
^+10...

Well said sKora

 

[gamerk316]

So...even a 4550 beats this? Another 5000 series card beaten by a simmilarly priced 4000 series model?

 

[Reynod]

Don why does the 4550 slightly outperform the 5450?

I didn't quite get your explanation ... as the core clock on the 5 is slightly higher (50Mhz).

 

[Guest]

Argh - comparisons lack the only one that proves whether or not this card is even worth $50:

Intel's Clarkdale-based processors and H55/57 motherboards

It's even referenced in the article, but not compared.

 

[rhino13]

* $50
* Air cooled

Need we say more?

 

[Pei-chen]

Wow, if 54xx is this sucky how bad will 53xx, 52xx and 51xx cards? I was hoping this card would replace a low profile 9600GT in a slim case. Guess I have to wait for Nvidia.

 

[invlem]

[citation][nom]popaholic[/nom]For the all the idiots out there, yes it can run Crysis, slightly.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.[/citation]

Its not a card designed for gaming, the point is someone like me with a HTPC can upgrade to a bit stream capable PC for $50, until now the only viable alternative for this solution was a 200-300$ sound card.

So yes, there is a point to this one, one that will make HTPC enthusiasts quite happy.

Passive card, lower power consumption, Bluray support, bitstream support = Awesome

 

[liemfukliang]

I hate Radeon

 

[jrivera04]

I am going to build a new HTPC and I have been waiting for this card to be released. My old setup used a HD2600PRO and did the job well enough.

This thing is going to do wonders attached to a HDTV.

 

[megamanx00]

Certainly not a gaming card. Perhaps the 5550 will have 160 shaders and offer at least lower level gaming performance to cheap HTPCs.

 

[Guest]

im thinking...car pc... up to 3 monitors?! one big one in the dash like normal. up to two more to spread around. maybe a reall small touch screen on center console displaying temps and well what else? ideas? ive been trying to conceptualize a good car pc for years...its getting closer with this card i think.

 

[mariushm]

[citation][nom]Yose3[/nom]what the point of this card? remind me again why does it exist?[/citation]

You can play games with this at 1280x720 at around 30-45fps, if you disable anti-aliasing and other special effects.
It has DVI and Displayport and VGA, and with a cheap adapter it converts the DVI to HDMI
It can decode h264 and VC1 in hardware so you don't need any fancy processor.
It has a TDP of 19W so the whole card probably uses 25-30W at full load, which will never happen in a HTPC - you could combine this with an AMD 45w cpu and a microatx mb and use a picoATX 65-80W power supply for a really small system
It's excellent for office systems that were bought 2-3 years ago with Intel integrated video cards that suck even at 2D and which only had VGA outputs.
It's perfect for 2D and still has enough juice for some 3D rendering if needed.
Need more?

 

[jennyh]

The 4550 beating this must be about drivers. It simply should not lose otherwise.

 

[cablechewer]

What I would have liked to see is a comparison to integrated solutions at 720p and 1080p. I have a HTPC with the Radeon 3300 integrated. Guests play games on that machine a couple times per year (Age of Wonders at the low end and MMORPGs at the high end). Would this represent a significant enough upgrade to justify the $50 and the power consumption increase? Would there be a significant enough improvement on my current 720p TV during streaming, blu-ray or DVD playback to justify it?

While the game benchmarks are interesting I think the review missed the two most significant markets for this card:
-the 2D big desktop crowd (that was a very nice 2D article and I wouldn't mind seeing this card assessed with those same tests)
-the HTPC users who are typically using a single 720p or 1080p TV

Actually if they ever make an AGP version of this I wonder if it would outperform my old 4400 in my old Athlon machine I use as a secondary system...

 

[bounty]

Left 4 Dead is not a beautiful game. It's fun, that's different. It looks like Quake 3 Arena with a few more poly and better textures. It's hard to notice how bad it looks when you're frantically running around, but actually stop and look at stuff and you'll see what I mean.

 

[pbrigido]

I didn't see in the article if it can do 5.1 or 7.1 out through HDMI or not. I have the Radeon 4200 and I only get 2 channel audio through HDMI...would love to upgrade to this if it can.

 

[rwpritchett]

I'm interested in this card for my HTPC. I hope card makers break from the reference design and come out with a card that doesn't take up two slots. Does the heatsink really have to be that big?? HTPC cases are cramped enough and I don't want to give up one of my tuners to make room!

 

[kentlowt]

[citation][nom]JohnnyLucky[/nom]If I understood the article correctly, then it seems this card would be ideal for a quiet home theater pc.[/citation]
Or for a person doing audio recording on their computer that needs more than one monitor but can't have the whirling sound of video card fans comming through their recordings...

There are plenty of uses for it gaming is just not really one of them.

 

[nforce4max]

Great ATI has yet to learn from their 4 rop mistake. The shader is ok and if they use at least GDDR3 or GDDR5 the mem performance will be ok. This gpu needs 8 rops to perform well enough while still being a low budget part.

 

[Guest]

This card would do wonderful as a HTPC card, imagine using 2 of them in your system, should give you enough performance for a fraction of the power you use from heavier cards.
This video card is good enough to be built into a gaming laptop,but it's place are HTPC's, and definitely budget gaming machines.
I don't play the latest games, so for me this card would do wonderfully.
I guess it outperforms a Radeon 9500 Pro card I purchased almost 8 years ago, so it's going to be good enough (and the 9500 pro card did use a fan).

I wonder how this card performs in dual raid or tripple raid config.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]pbrigido[/nom]I didn't see in the article if it can do 5.1 or 7.1 out through HDMI or not. I have the Radeon 4200 and I only get 2 channel audio through HDMI...would love to upgrade to this if it can.[/citation]

Yes it can, in fact all Radeon 4000 series cards can handle 8 channel LPCM audio over HDMI.

In addition to that, the 5000 series can bitstream Encoded Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, as well.

 

[repnet computers]

I have been waiting for this card, I just wish the review had a little less gaming benchmarks. This is a great card for people that want 3 monitors or have an older card like a 3xxx or earlier and don't game. I would like to see more about what GPGPU advantages it could bring over older cards.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]repnet computers[/nom]I would like to see more about what GPGPU advantages it could bring over older cards.[/citation]

AMD's GPGPU stuff is extremely limited and the only thing most people are likely to ever use is the upcoming Flash 10.1 plugin, which we tested.

There's just not much for GPGPU stuff out there. When there's a significant amount of options on the market we'll test ATI Stream vs. CUDA. But at this point the software just isn't there to take advantage of it.

 

[brisingamen]

i bet atleast one person will buy this and attempt to play crysis.