ATI Radeon HD 5450 Review

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,090   +2,042
Staff member
The new Radeon HD 5450, code-named Cedar Pro, will be the most affordable graphics card belonging to the HD 5000 series. This is also the first on AMD’s latest wave of graphics products to do away with GDDR5 memory, replacing it with older GDDR3. Naturally, the Radeon HD 5450 is not designed exclusively for 3D gaming and certain versions will support advanced features such as Eyefinity.

Read the full review at:
https://www.techspot.com/review/244-ati-radeon-hd-5450/

Please leave your feedback here.
 
This is way too underpowered. The 5500 series should be much better, but if you want gaming then 5770 is the cheapest you should buy.
 
Not everyone is a gamer like you guys,there are people that would be interested in much power it consumes.
ATI wouldn't bring out a card like this if people didn't buy them.
There's nothing wrong with this card,it's faster than the card it's replacing.
 
The first two comments are kind of sad really, what about HTPC owners/makers and people who DO NOT PLAY GAMES ? and yes, such a human exists whose sole driving force is NOT FPS. looks like a great low power card for great HD video playback.
 
@BMfan and @Regenweald hit the nail on the head. This is a perfect fit for a small form-factor HTPC (it can run well in half-height configuration with no cooling issues). Seriously, if you are a gamer and even looking at a sub-$50 card to begin with, you've obviously got no clue. Unless, of course, your gaming consists of nothing but Solitaire and online flash games. In which case, this card would work great! heh
 
Seeing how the connectors are placed, that would be a good card for Small Form Factor systems, commonly found in corporations.
Being able to change the bracket and put the VGA connector on the next slot is a nice option.
 
Glad to see they left the 3 monitor support in this low end card. It is actually kind of tempting to pick one up just for that.
 
This is a perfect card for the builds I do for relatives (mainly older) who want nothing more than to do Internet surfing, watch an occasional You Tube and playing Farmville and Bejeweled.
 
Don't we expect the more powerful cards to run better at the resolutions you use in this review? I don't see a real good reason for compare cards at this price point at these reasolutions unless you findings are miraculous. I feel there is a lack of comparisons on a variety of lower resolution setting that are still resonable for gaming.

Sure the 1050 kinda covers what the performance might be like for 1080, but what about 720? Some people might have small game boxies for LAN parties or even connect to an HD TV instead of a standard monitor. Moreover, unless you test at standard HD resolutions we will never know if AMD has optimized these cards for 720/1080 resolutions.

I know it takes time to run these tests on all cards (trust me I appreciate the insight), but I believe it would be very helpful to give us the stats at lower resolutions for the card as an FYI. I mean, come on, I'm not expecting the card for the price to run well at the resolutions you tested. With all the complexities of drivers and hardware, there might be a sweet spot you missed that could be just right for other people.

Cheers
 
@mranderson - I was thinking a bit along the same lines as I read the review. There almost needs to be a separate category of testing for those using standard HD resolutions, to see what the performance is at those standard 702 and 1080 resolutions... Particularly for cards like this, which seem perfect for an HTPC application.
 
Not everyone is a gamer like you guys,there are people that would be interested in much power it consumes.
ATI wouldn't bring out a card like this if people didn't buy them.
There's nothing wrong with this card,it's faster than the card it's replacing.

So it doesn’t bother you that the Radeon HD 4650 and GeForce GT 220 are the same price, yet considerably more powerful? It’s not faster than the card its replacing, what is it replacing at $60?

The first two comments are kind of sad really, what about HTPC owners/makers and people who DO NOT PLAY GAMES ? and yes, such a human exists whose sole driving force is NOT FPS. looks like a great low power card for great HD video playback.

I agree but for the same price we have had cards that are great for HD video playback for the last 12 months plus.

This is a perfect card for the builds I do for relatives (mainly older) who want nothing more than to do Internet surfing, watch an occasional You Tube and playing Farmville and Bejeweled.

Tom you are the kind of person I want to hear from. When building a new system why would you invest $60 in something you don’t need? This seems crazy to me when building a budget system. For the kind of things your relatives want to do why not just get an IGP motherboard? Performance wise it’s going to be exactly the same for what they do and it will save you $60. This is why I am a little confused about graphics cards such as the Radeon HD 5450 right now.

I need to do a little more research into why you guys are buying them.

@mranderson - I was thinking a bit along the same lines as I read the review. There almost needs to be a separate category of testing for those using standard HD resolutions, to see what the performance is at those standard 702 and 1080 resolutions... Particularly for cards like this, which seem perfect for an HTPC application.

We test at standard LCD resolutions, though I know they are changing now. Still I don’t think this really changes anything, the performance was unacceptable for gaming at 1440x900 and it will be the same at slightly lower resolutions. I did see that some reviews tested at 1024x768 and I noticed that there results were really no different. As we found and many of you have mentioned this is not a gaming graphics card.
 
@ Steve, you make a good point on the price, but I think that is just AMD enjoying "first to market". Once Nvidia releases *anything* DX11, I think we'll see some attractive price cuts in the 5800 series. So even though its price may not be the most sensible right now, when it's price gets to where it should be and due to its smaller manufacturing process, it think power consumption and thermal output would make it the better option.
 
@ Steve, i do agree with your points the only thing is most people i know would rather have a graphics card than on board.
I think the reason is because a few years back on board graphic's really sucked,that's why there is a market for these type of cards.Until people realize that on board graphics is fine now if you don't play games like COD,they will still sell.
It is faster than the card it's replacing since the card it's replacing is the 4350,this was taken from the article-The Radeon HD 5450 is stepping in to replace the Radeon HD 4350 graphics card.
I know price wise it's not,but i wouldn't buy one of these in any case.
 
Okay thanks for the feedback guys.

BMfan the Radeon HD 5450 is meant to be stepping in for the 4350, but right now its not and that is why I recommend not buying it. Once it drops at least $20 in price then yes it will be replacing the 4350 nicely.

"I know price wise it's not,but i wouldn't buy one of these in any case."
- then you got our message ;)
 
@Steve - I've built my share of computers for casual computing and media roles, usually for friends or family. Particularly when I'm building an HTPC type of system, I look more at power usage, heat generation, form factor (half height usually), and output options. That said, I've come to prefer integrated GPUs on motherboards lately, some of my recent nVidia boards were wonderful, and having HDMI out is great for an HTPC. But if who I'm building for wants to maintain some level of current support, say for DX11, nVidia just hasn't had a mobo option for them. Enter cards like this one. Sure it's a bit more than the previous generation version it's intended to replace, it's because it's new and there's nothing from the other camp competing well with it yet... But, if current generation hardware is requested, I'd throw this into a basic system without a qualm. If they could care less, I'd probably look for a good integrated mobo.
 
Still pumping out these pathetic 64-bit cards?

Who is this for? A cheapo build for OEMs, is all I can figure.

At least get a 128 bit card, argh!

They keep pumping out high end cards and go backwards to low end, shouldn't it go the other way around?

I would never buy any of this junk, if $50 is holding you back, why even spend a dime on your computer?

This is crap upgrade fodder and smells like junk to be tossed in the next $300 PC, about the only place I would put one.
 
I think the price isn't bad plus it has DTS HD Master and Dolby TrueHD which I look for since I'm not much of a gamer and more into media. Plus its 3D capable, i don't see why all the hate.
 
Hi, new to forum, Johnnyparts is nick name. Just to comment, i set up some small form factor Dells for the boss with on board video, now they want dual monitors on a couple. Perfect solution I'd say.
Vga only onboard.
 
Hi Johnnyparts you should sign up for the forums rather than use the guest account.

While the Radeon HD 5450 will do what you want all IGP chipsets these days support dual outputs. You would almost be better off spending the money on a new motherboard. This will cost the same amount as a graphics card yet it will provide you with more up to date features.
 
Hi ive just ordered a pc and it comes with this graphics card, and being 17i woul like to play games on it such as guild wars counter strike and world of war craft, would this card give me good quality graphics or would i have to purchase another in its place? thanks Matt
 
Hi ive just ordered a pc and it comes with this graphics card, and being 17i woul like to play games on it such as guild wars counter strike and world of war craft, would this card give me good quality graphics or would i have to purchase another in its place? thanks Matt

No even in those games you will not be able to enabled good quality settings with the Radeon HD 5450. I recommend a Radeon HD 5670 minimum while the Radeon HD 5750 would be ideal.
 
Because those cards decode DTS-HD? This card is aimed at people like myself. HTPC user zero games. That's what an Xbox is for in my mind, no need to constantly keep upgrading my hardware for each game that hits the market.
 
If you can't run more than 15 fps with a Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition (Overclocked @ 3.70GHz). Chances are you only want this card to for windows aps only.
 
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