Not as good as it used to be since 2001
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AMD lets loose its HD 5450
TODAY SEES THE LAUNCH of AMD's last and lightest member of its Evergreen family of GPUs.
Codenamed 'Cedar', the 59mm2 chip now known as the ATI Radeon HD 5450 will be the little engine that could. That is, it could do HTPC and casual gaming, but that’s just about it.
The HD 5450 lands to replace the HD 4350 discrete graphics chip. In terms of performance you shouldn’t expect too much of a surprise. It does, after all, come with a MSRP of $60.
So what's new? AMD's engineers hacked the core down to just 80 stream processors, plugged a 64-bit memory interface onto the card and hooked up 512MB of GDDR3 - the usual low-end value formula. It doesn’t seem like much, does it? Well, it isn’t much, but AMD is waving two enormous flags at consumers - DX11 support and low power consumption.
If you really want DX11 we’d recommend you look higher up the food chain, as this is hardly playable lest you go to really low resolutions. However, in terms of power consumption, it’s the one. It would be a shoe-in for HTPC GPU of the Year, if such an award existed.
AMD says its new chip is extremely light on its toes and draws just 19.1W in full swing and only 6.4W at idle. This is so light, in fact, that it won’t even need a fan to keep it cool.
This brings us to another point, HTPCs.
Considering the fact that HTPCs are increasingly sophisticated beasts of HD burden, the ATI Radeon HD 5450 will power your living room PC, be quiet about it and still allow you to play some casual games.
The HD 5450 also sports all the marketing keywords you’ll find in AMD’s playbook (with a few caveats, so we’ve been told): Eyefinity, it’ll power three displays, yes, but you’ll need the non-included adapter plug; ATI Stream, a rather handicapped version of it, as the chip had its GPGPU bits redesigned and is a bit lacking in performance, and; CrossfireX, which is done via the PCIe bus rather than through a bridge.
Why would you buy one? Who knows why, but we can see where there’s a niche for it. Now if only the partners made it with a half-height bracket, a single-height cooler and included the Eyefinity dongle. µ
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Hello all I think many of us may be forgetting the point of this card and why it could be a big deal for home theater buffs. 1st all pc’s are normally the last to get reasonable price technology when it comes to A/V stuff. What the writer may have failed to mention is that this card can decode all the HD surround formats natively…for less than 100.00!! Do we remember the 249.99 priced ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 24-bit 192KHz PCI Express x1 that still sells for 249.99 by the way. I think this is a good thing for hometheater pc buffs.
"just hope that $50 Fermi will be 2x or 3x or event 5x better than HD 54xx. I hope Nvidia will do the same 512 SP for hi end, 256 SP mainstream, 128 SP for low end."
If 512 SP Fermi is 500mm^2, then a 128 SP Fermi would be over 125mm^2 - especially as some functions are fixed size, so probably closer to 200mm^2. That's just not doable for a sub-$100 graphics card.
A 64-SP Fermi is probably the best option you'll get, and it'll be late this year. Or NVIDIA will wait until 28nm.
YEAS
XBMC FTW
Simple, free, great interface/GUI in general, and does good streaming.
Runs on my little hardware accelerated box, all nice all quiet, and streams off my server downstairs.
If I wanted to replace such a system, I'd probably go for a little ITX box with one of these in it.
With HD video, and audio over HDMI(?), this is not a bad little investment for a new system.
Simple, cheap, and quiet as a sponge.
I like Radeon 58xx because it is normal 2x HD 48xx. I like HD 57xx because it is 2x HD 47xx or about the same as HD 48xx. I hate 56xx because it is <= 46xx. I also hate 54xx because it is <= 44xx. The golden rule should be performace 1600 SP, mainstream about 800 SP, low end about 400 SP. So far only hi end and mainstream play the rule. Low end is just 20% below what it should be. I just hope that $50 Fermi will be 2x or 3x or event 5x better than HD 54xx. I hope Nvidia will do the same 512 SP for hi end, 256 SP mainstream, 128 SP for low end.
First, Really Do NOT encourage HD Game Cards, Often Perofrmance is HALF of Non HD. Its, Rube Name, Of Sorts, ye Coman As Snarks.
Heres 5450 Lower Price : From Hummm, something just as reliable as gooseing IT For HD, eboy:
MSI Radeon HD 5450 512MB 64-bit GDDR3 new R5450-MD512H
Item condition: New
Quantity: 2 available
Please enter a quantity of $quantity$ or less
Please enter a quantity of 1
Price: US $53.99
So Maybe More In OK Zone with HD @ 20% discount, Two More Cards Coming from ati, 9fed & one In February. Nifty, Well, $130 Is Bit Much, theres Still Those $100 XX70 Cards About. Heck if Dx11 Isn't Hufff, In 4000 series AVIVO Is In software, So Maybe Just As Good, If You downlaod AVIVO, As Its' on Bottom of ATI Driver page & Seperate Add on. Is 4870 At same $$$ As 5450 Better? YA Bet Cha....There 5X30 For $40, Too, Somewhere in SideBar Ads, Not in ?Search, SideBar Ads Are In Braile,?Right.
VDPAU* ~much~
There are like a half dozen (or so), Distro's out there that cater to just that.
Gen2VDR-3.0
yaVDR
EasyVDR
C't VDR
Or you can try an' roll'n your own.
To clarify;
XBMC - Multimedia Playback Software w/RSS and limited on-line fuctions
VDR - Video Disk Recorder **Requires** a DVB-x (C - Cable, S(2) - Sat. or T - Terrestrial) Card. You can (or could with version 1.7.0 Pause and rewind live TV (it's been broken since ~I think~ 1.7.4 (current dev vers is 1.7.11) Current Stable is 1.6.0 but, does not support HD or h.264.
It used to be that you needed a so-called Full Feature Card to use VDR (FF for short) what that meant was that you needed a Hardware MPEG-2 Decoder to use it. Thankfully these Dinosaurs are slowly being left behind now. With the general trend towards nVidias' VDPAU and the XBMC.
VDPAU =/= nVidia GF8400 (or better)
As much as I like Windows Media Center I wish that someone from ATI or NVIDIA would work with the people at XBMC so they could leverage the GPU in XBMC.
Would be a huge purchasing decision for me if something other than a broadcom chip did GPU acceleration in XBMC.
"Naaaa I didn't think so either, so I fail to see where you are coming from. 'Cause there is no way that failure from Microsoft could ever be taken seriously."
I was of course referring to Media Center (I leave it to the Reader to determine which ever version, that they care to imagine). Fact is they are all sh!te
Then does this mean that ATI have finally got 'round to making some Hardware Accelerated (i.e. h.264), Drivers for Linux then?
Naaaa I didn't think so either, so I fail to see where you are coming from. 'Cause there is no way that failure from Microsoft could ever be taken seriously.
NO DVB-C
NO DVB-S
NO DVB-S2 (h.264)
NO Common Interface
ONLY DVB-T!! (And ONLY FTA at that!)
Yeah, gee no wonder why I went for the Penguin (In this case Gen2VDR), to address these "omissions" that Microsoft continuously fails to address.
Personally, I'd give the HTPC of the Year Award to the Green Goblin, at least they gave us VDPAU.
But, then I personally couldn't give a toss between ATI or nVidia. I use a Reel Extension HD Card in my HTPC System and I find that, that does the job quite nicely...