18 Feb. 2016

This page below has links to download the latest free drivers for AMD video cards Radeon HD 5450, which is part of the Radeon HD 5000 series. Installation files are taken from the official website and are suitable for: Windows 7, 10, 8, 8.1, XP, Vista 32/64-bit (x86/x64).

To make it easier to select the files you need, the version of your Windows and its bit depth are indicated below.

Your computer runs on:

1. Download

   For Windows 7 32-bit

2. Download (286 MB / version 15.7.1 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 07/29/2015)

   For Windows 7 64-bit

3. Download (154 MB / version 15.7.1 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 07/29/2015)

   For Windows 10 32-bit

4. Download (217 MB / version 15.7.1 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 07/29/2015)

   For Windows 10 64-bit

5. Download (205 MB / version 14.4 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 04/25/2014)

   For Windows 8 32-bit

6. Download (260 MB / version 14.4 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 04/25/2014)

   For Windows 8 64-bit

7. Download (216 MB / version 15.7.1 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 07/29/2015)

   For Windows 8.1 32-bit

8. Download (287 MB / version 15.7.1 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 07/29/2015)

   For Windows 8.1 64-bit

9. Download (179 MB / version 14.4 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 04/25/2014)

   For Windows XP 32 and 64-bit

10. Download (151 MB / version 13.12 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 12/18/2013)

    For Windows Vista 32-bit

11. Download (209 MB / version 13.12 (Catalyst Software Suite) / release date 12/18/2013)

    For Windows Vista 64-bit

Fallback - Get drivers using AMD Driver Autodetect

This option is convenient because the program AMD Driver Autodetect will select and download the latest working drivers, which are suitable for your AMD video card and your version of Windows. The program does not require installation, it was created by AMD and files are downloaded from their official servers.

Instructions:

1. Run AMD Driver Autodetect and it will immediately automatically select necessary files to install drivers.
2. To download files, click on the “Download Now” button.
3. Wait for the files to download and start the installation.

Introduction

Over the past six months, AMD has not ceased to delight gamers, introducing new products from the Radeon 5000 line almost every month. During this time, almost all market segments have been covered, ranging from top solutions with a price of about $600 to solutions for the mass market, as well as budget video adapters costing at 100$. If you remember, AMD planned to release two graphics chips for the first quarter of 2010 - Redwood and Cedar. The Redwood chip was introduced in the form of the Radeon HD 5670 graphics adapter, and now it’s Cedar’s turn to introduce it.

Today, more than four months after the release of the Radeon HD 5870, AMD is introducing the antipode of this graphics adapter called the Radeon HD 5450. If the Radeon HD 5870 was the fastest single-chip solution in the company's history, then the Radeon HD 5450 graphics adapter is destined for a place in the ultra-budget segment video cards with all the ensuing consequences. However, do not forget that this video adapter belongs to the glorious Radeon HD 5000 line, which, naturally, means support for DirectX11, as well as ATI Eyefinity, AVIVO, PowerPlay, Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio technologies and other advantages characteristic of the video card family Latest generation AMD. However, in terms of its characteristics, the Radeon HD 5450 is extremely close to the models of the previous generation of video adapters from AMD - Radeon HD 4550 and Radeon HD 4350.

Let's take a closer look at the new video card from AMD. What level of performance will it be able to offer users? Is it suitable for gaming? Naturally, we should be aware that this is not the most productive model, as evidenced by its modest characteristics and equally modest price.

As we've already noted, theoretically the Radeon HD 5450 offers all the same features as the higher-end models of AMD's latest line of graphics adapters. The main difference lies in the truncated number of multiprocessor SIMD engines, which entailed a reduction in the number of stream processors, texture units, rasterization units and a truncated memory channel.

In particular, the Radeon HD 5450 can boast of having only two SIMD engines with a total number of stream processors equal to 80, as well as 8 texture units, 4 rasterization units and a 64-bit memory interface with support for GDDR3/2 standards. The chips themselves are manufactured at the production facilities of TSMC, according to the 40nm technological process. Note that the number of transistors in one chip is only 292 million.

The Radeon HD 5450 model discussed in this review has 512MB of memory on board and is passively cooled. The dimensions of the card, frankly speaking, are not impressive. Length printed circuit board is 18cm, and its height is only 6cm, so the installed radiator, which directly covers the graphics chip itself and memory chips, seems quite massive. Note that the heatsink takes up some space near the adjacent slot and installing a second graphics adapter there will be very difficult. Therefore, formally, the Radeon HD 5450 can be considered a dual-slot solution, however, there is no doubt that third-party manufacturers will soon present this video adapter with a single-slot cooling system.

As for power consumption, the declared figure in idle mode is at around 6.4 W, while in maximum load mode the power consumed by the adapter is 19.1 W. Such power consumption levels do not require an additional power connector and fit well within the 75W limit that the PCI Express slot can provide.

The frequency characteristics of the Radeon HD 5450 are also quite modest and amount to 650 MHz for the graphics core and 800 MHz for the memory (400 MHz when using a modification with GDDR2 memory). At the same time, the memory channel bandwidth is 1.6 Gbps, and the computing power of the video adapter is 104 GFLOPs. Note that AMD welcomes the release by third-party manufacturers of slightly overclocked modifications of the Radeon HD 5450, in which the memory frequency is increased to 900 MHz.

The interface set in the reference version of the HD 5450 is, frankly speaking, ambiguous. Connectors include DVI, VGA and DisplayPort outputs. It is difficult to understand why the latter was needed in an ultra-budget video adapter, especially since this makes building a configuration of three monitors for working in ATI Eyefinity mode very difficult.

The reverse side of the printed circuit board is open, and there is nothing special to cover there; there are not a large number of components mounted on its surface. The absence of a connector for working in CrossFire is striking, although this is probably also a “disease” of the reference version of the video adapter. True, this does not mean that it is impossible to run CrossFire mode for two HD 5450 graphics adapters, since in this case the PCI Express interface bandwidth is quite enough to exchange data between them.

Testing

As a platform for testing, we took a bunch of quad-core Core processor i7 965 and Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard. The system was equipped with 6GB random access memory OCZ standard DDR3, thus creating the most comfortable conditions for evaluating the performance of the graphics adapter. At the same time, one could be sure that none of the other components of the system, besides the video card, would act as a “bottleneck”, limiting performance in 3D applications.

Before starting testing in the motherboard BIOS, all parameters affecting performance were set to their maximum values, and all peripheral devices not related to the subject of testing were disabled. The operating system was installed on the newly formatted hard drive. Windows system 7 Ultimate x64.

Test system configuration:

• Processor – Core i7 965 (3.20 GHz);
• Motherboard – Gigabyte EX58-UD5 (X58 Express chipset);
• RAM - 6GB OCZ DDR3-1333;
• Hard drive – Western Digital Raptor 150GB;
• Operating system - Windows 7 Ultimate x64;
• Test participants: Radeon HD 5450, Radeon HD 5670, Radeon HD 5770, Radeon HD 5750, GeForce GT 240, GeForce GTX 260 Core 216;
• Drivers - ATI Catalyst v10.10b, NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v195.50.

Test applications:

• 3DMark Vantage v1.0.1;
• H.A.W.X.;
• Left 4 Dead;
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

The latest version of Futuremark's synthetic 3DMark Vantage test is designed specifically to run on Windows Vista and uses the latest technical details characteristic of DirectX 10, which in previous Windows versions were unavailable. However, 3DMark Vantage is not just a port of 3DMark06 for DirectX 10; several new tests have been added to the package, as well as support for the latest hardware. We tested using the Extreme settings at 1920x1200 pixels with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering enabled.

Well, there's not much to see here; the Radeon HD 5450 is definitely not designed to handle high-definition gaming.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is developed on the basis of a significantly redesigned and improved Doom 3 engine. When drawing images in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Megatexture technology from John Carmack is used, which allows you to create images of large areas without a significant load on the adapter's memory subsystem. Testing was carried out at maximum graphics settings using 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering.

As testing has shown, the Radeon HD 5450 graphics adapter at resolutions of 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 is not capable of producing an acceptable level of frames per second required for comfortable gaming.

Left 4 Dead

The game Left 4 Dead from Turtle Rock Studios (today a division of Valve) belongs to the survival horror genre and is focused on cooperative play. Like Half Life 2, it uses the Source engine. Test participants' performance was assessed at resolutions of 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 using 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering at maximum in-game quality settings.

The test results in Left 4 Dead were not much different from the results demonstrated in the previous testing of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The Radeon HD 5450 video card was able to demonstrate the proper level of performance only at low resolution and with low quality settings.

Tom Clancy`s H.A.W.X

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. is a game simulator in which the player is given the opportunity to personally control more than 50 types of various aircraft. During testing, all quality settings were set to their maximum values. Moreover, DX10 mode was used for GeForce cards, and DX10.1 for Radeon cards.

Radeon HD 5450 video adapter this test demonstrated extremely low performance, making gameplay completely impossible. To achieve acceptable results, you must reduce the resolution and insert less demanding levels of quality settings.

Playing video

Looking at the performance demonstrated by the Radeon HD 5450 in our gaming tests, you can't help but come to the conclusion that this video adapter is not intended for gamers. Its advantages lie in a slightly different area - passive cooling and compact dimensions, which will certainly appeal to owners of HTPC systems. In this case, the role of the video adapter when playing high-definition video and its ability to take on some of the decoding tasks comes to the fore, thereby freeing up the resources of the central processor. During testing, the performance of the video adapter was checked when playing several popular formats, including DVD and Blu-Ray discs, MOV files and compressed M2TS files.

The Radeon HD 5450 performed well in this test, providing smooth playback of video data of any format, while the CPU load was at a fairly low level.

Energy consumption

Before finishing the review, let's say a few words about characteristics such as power consumption and noise levels. Throughout testing, we monitored the power consumption of our test system, taking measurements both at idle and under load.

As you can see, the Radeon HD 5450 video adapter is not very hungry, both in idle mode and when working with maximum load. As for the level of noise emitted by the adapter, in this case we have a complete absence of it, since the card is cooled by a passive cooler.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that the Radeon HD 5450 belongs to the ultra-budget class of devices, and as testing has shown, such a solution is unlikely to be suitable for serious games with maximum settings and resolutions. The strength of the HD 5450 graphics adapter is its performance during video playback, which, together with its modest size and passive cooling system, makes such a solution extremely attractive for installation in compact HTPC cases.

The recommended price for the Radeon HD 5450 ranges from $49 to $59, depending on the manufacturer's pricing policy. So if you don't plan to spend a lot of money on a video card, then the Radeon HD 5450 is quite suitable for you, combining support for many newfangled technologies, including DirectX 11, with a modest price.

Verdict website: modest performance for equally modest means.

Competitors

AMD surprised us with its performance (and price) Radeon HD 5970 video cards; won the hearts of gamers with the ability to play on three monitors using the Eyefinity, first appeared in 5870; attracted by the good price/quality ratio models 5850; interested home cinema lovers video card 5770, impressed with model 5750 for the mass market and intrigued 5670- a (relatively) entry-level video card.

We've already released quite a few articles on the new Radeon HD 5000 lineup in recent months, and each of AMD's new products has demonstrated serious gaming power at its respective price point.

However, all this was true until this article: meet the ATI Radeon HD 5450 video card. It cannot be said that it is aimed at gamers. But you will get a video card from the Radeon HD 5000 line for only $50 () for “ordinary mortals”.

If you've been keeping up with the recent announcements of Radeon graphics cards, you'll know that they're not just good for great gaming performance: let's not forget Eyefinity multi-monitor support and a protected Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio audio path, all of which were included still on all video cards of the 5000 line. And fans of these functions will certainly be pleased that they are also supported on the HD 5450 model, released to replace the Radeon HD 4350 and 4550 video cards.

Let's take a closer look at the new Radeon HD 5450 graphics card. Our tests will show how well it will satisfy those users who need a low-end discrete graphics card. We know very well that this is not a model for gamers. And yet, we couldn't resist testing its performance in games.

The specifications of the ATI Radeon HD 5450, frankly speaking, are not encouraging. Until now, all graphics cards in the 5000 line have represented a significant step forward compared to previous older models. But since this is the most “budget” video card, the new Radeon HD 5450 has nothing to be proud of.

Now you understand why the new video card did not impress us. Judging by the characteristics, the Radeon HD 5450 can be called the equivalent of the Radeon HD 4550 with a technological process cut down to 40 nm, with a GPU frequency increased by 50 MHz (and, of course, such pleasant bonuses as support for DirectX 11, which is most likely associated with the increase in the number transistors).

Let's take a look at the processor circuit.

The Radeon HD 5450 is not a "monster", it is a GPU aimed at the maximum. efficiency. Judging by the processor design, it contains two SIMD engines, each with four texture units and eight stream processors (each stream processor contains five ALUs, called stream cores). As a result, the GPU is equipped with 80 thread cores and eight texture units. Notice the single 64-bit memory controller connected to the back of the rendering pipeline. Four blocks of ROP raster operations are located nearby.

Unfortunately, SIMD engines have been cut in half compared to the GPUs used in the Radeon HD 5670 and higher models, where each engine has 16 stream processors. If the 5450 had retained this structure, then we would have received 160 streaming cores, and the video card would have performed better compared to the Radeon HD 4550.

As a result, 80 streaming cores give approximately 1/20 of the performance of the Radeon HD 5870. So the progress compared to the 4550 is hardly significant. More interestingly, the new Radeon HD 5000 line, if the number of streaming cores is the same, turns out to be slightly slower than the Radeon HD 4000 line. We asked an AMD representative for the reasons. As it turned out, this is due to optimization new architecture under DirectX 11, this support required additional transistors, as well as other functions. We were also told that despite the frequency advantage of the new video card, the new Radeon HD 5450 will run somewhere between 4350 and 4550. However, the Radeon HD 5450 video card replaced both previous models.

In any case, even without evaluating gaming performance, we can say that the advantages of the Radeon HD 5450 are not related to 3D. This graphics card simply brings the features of the 5000 line to the level of entry-level graphics cards. Let's see how interesting these features are.

"Budget" Eyefinity

Eyefinity is a feature that will clearly appeal to many potential buyers, and the Radeon HD 5450 graphics card is perhaps most attractive to non-gamers who require a three-monitor setup (artists, brokers, translators, journalists, virus analysts and so on). Today you can find a large number of used old 17" LCD monitors, so even the average user can assemble an inexpensive three-display configuration. A 17" monitor with a 4:3 screen format (standard for 1280x1024 resolution) will have almost the same height as a 19" or 20" widescreen display. Therefore, two 17" monitors will complement the central 20" display well. The author used an old 17" LCD monitor for the second system, and we bought another 17" display for $50. We installed both monitors next to a 20" widescreen display, hoping to connect them through the Eyefinity configuration.

But it's not that simple. Of course, Eyefinity is a fantastic feature that is supported by all ATI Radeon HD 5000 graphics cards, but it does have a couple of drawbacks for a "budget" environment. The biggest one is that you'll have to use a single DisplayPort connection. In a three-monitor configuration, at least one must be connected through the DisplayPort output of the video card. If your displays do not have a DisplayPort input, you will have to buy an active DisplayPort to HDMI/DVI/VGA converter. Unfortunately, cheap passive adapters will not work. And for an active converter you will have to pay at least $100.

All that remains is to invest in a new monitor with DisplayPort support, which are rare and usually cost more than models without DisplayPort, or spend another $100 on a DisplayPort adapter. Both options cannot be called good.

However, there is still a way to get around this limitation. As it turned out, there are many cheap active DisplayPort to VGA adapters on the market, which were just right for us. The VGA adapter limits the maximum resolution, but we were able to set the 20" monitor to its native resolution of 1680x1050 without any problems in extended desktop mode. We used a Startech DisplayPort to VGA adapter (model DP2VGA), which we found at a nearby store. In addition In addition, we have information that the Bytecc AP-DPVGA adapter also works great, and can be found in online stores for less than $25.

We started our tests with a Radeon HD 5770 video card, an active adapter, a 20" widescreen monitor in the center and two 17" displays on the sides. For the central 20" monitor, we used a DisplayPort to VGA adapter because we found that this adapter needs to be used on the highest resolution monitor for everything to work properly. One of the 17" displays was connected via its own DVI cable, and the other was connected via its own DVI cable. via a DVI-to-VGA adapter.

Eyefinity technology allowed us to group monitors with one desktop, which is necessary for using it in games. You can start testing! However, Eyefinity still has several limitations. The resolution had to be the same for all three displays, so we couldn't set the resolution to 1680x1024 for the middle display and 1280x1024 for the edge monitors, which would have resulted in 4240x1024. Eyefinity technology limited us to 1280x1024 on each monitor or 3840x1024.

The result was that the center monitor stretched the 4:3 aspect ratio onto a 16:10 panel, which wasn't as attractive as we'd hoped. However, for games you can find some solutions, including utilities for changing the frame format and field of view (in CoD game: MW2, the screenshot of which is shown below, we used free utility Widescreen Fixer). But for the most part, gamers who want to replicate this setup will have to put up with a stretched image on an average monitor, which is by no means ideal. If you want to collect a "budget" gaming computer with multiple monitors, it is better to purchase three identical displays.

Now the bad news. Although we were able to build a low-cost Eyefinity configuration with our Radeon HD 5770 sample, it did not work with the Radeon HD 5450 graphics card. It looks like our DisplayPort to VGA adapter is to blame, since it is not listed in list of supported Eyefinity adapters on the AMD website. After checking with AMD, which was able to test the same video card with an active adapter "Accel B101B-001B DisplayPort to VGA", the company confirmed that Eyefinity works as expected. The conclusion is simple: make sure the adapters are compatible with Eyefinity before purchasing them.

Work in HTPC: Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio sound is transmitted in encoded form (bitstream).

The Radeon HD 5450 is completely passively cooled, consumes little power, and accepts a half-height slot blank. All these characteristics are great for home theater (HTPC). In addition, the video card can transmit high-resolution audio in encoded format (bitstream) to a compatible receiver via a protected audio path. This is the only $50 graphics card that supports this feature (except Intel processors Clarkdale and motherboards H55/57), so HTPC enthusiasts will certainly be interested in the graphics card without much hesitation.

We spent quick tests The Radeon HD 5450's ability to play and process Blu-ray content, and then compared it with the GeForce 210 graphics card (except for some of the integrated graphics cores that we tested last year).

As it turns out, the results for discrete video cards are identical. Both models provided flawless playback with high quality. I'd give slight preference to the Radeon for noise reduction and the GeForce for eliminating edge staircases, but both are good enough to score a perfect 100 in the HD HQV test. We noticed a slight delay between the start of the video clip and the improvements triggering on the Radeon, but in real conditions you won't pay attention to her. The graphics cards cost the same, but the Radeon HD 5450 offers significantly more powerful audio features, so the Radeon graphics card can be recommended for HTPC enthusiasts.

ATI Stream

The new video card supports ATI Stream technology. However, the number of thread cores here is 20 times less compared to 5870, so we did not expect any miracles in this regard. And the number of applications that support ATI Stream is still limited today. Indeed, it's hard to get excited about a feature that hasn't reached the critical mass to gain acceptance among the majority of consumers. In any case, it will be interesting to see the distribution of the upcoming plugin Adobe Flash 10.1 for the browser. Then the video acceleration and processing capabilities offered by Radeon HD 5000 video cards will be appreciated by those of us who often watch videos from YouTube and other sites. So we decided to try the beta version Flash plugin 10.1.

We tested the Muppet version of Bohemian Rhapsody at 1080p on our slowest test platform, which we use to evaluate the power consumption of video cards - it runs an Athlon II X2 240e processor. At such a high resolution, during playback the processor is loaded by about 50% without acceleration. And after activating Flash acceleration, the Radeon HD 5450 video card was able to reduce the CPU load to just over 40%. AMD provided us with data that showed we should see a big difference after enabling video acceleration, but we were unable to replicate the results. However, remember that the load on the CPU during playback YouTube video usually much lower since most videos are output at a lower resolution. Reducing the playback quality to 720p resulted in a 25% reduction in CPU load.

DirectX 11

The Radeon HD 5450 video card supports DirectX 11. But let's be honest: this video card is too weak to buy it specifically for games. We run the risk of disclosing gaming performance results in advance, but we’ll still say right away: this video card will not provide DirectX 11 support to the mass gamer. At least not in the way it's implied. We have already set the bar at Radeon HD 5670 review, and here this can be seen even more strongly.

The Radeon HD 5450 is a small, half-height video card, and the package includes a corresponding slot blank for short cases. The length of the video card is less than 18 cm, and the height does not exceed 6 cm.

At first glance, the new Radeon HD 5450 can be confused with the 4550 it replaces. As an AMD representative emphasized, the 5450 has the same dimensions as the 4550, that is, AMD partners can use the same cooling systems if necessary, reducing the cost of releasing new models.

The heatsink on the reference video card is quite massive, but it has one of the most attractive designs, which we have ever seen in an inexpensive video card with passive cooling. As you'll see in our temperature test, it handles the 5450 GPU quite well.

Our reference graphics card provided DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort outputs, but other manufacturers have the ability to customize interfaces to suit their needs. Surely, models without a DisplayPort output will appear on the market, even if this puts an end to configurations with three monitors.

It's hard to believe that this tiny GPU contains 292 million transistors. Remember the original Intel Pentium processors? They only consisted of 3.1 million transistors. This means that the tiny Radeon GPU contains more than 94 times more transistors than Pentium processors. It seems incredible.

We decided to test the Radeon HD 5450 against its main competitors in the $50 segment. This includes previous models, namely the Radeon HD 4550 and 4650, the competing GeForce 210 and GeForce 9500 GT on DDR2 memory.

Let's immediately note that the Radeon HD 5450 sample we received ran with memory at 900 MHz, which is 100 MHz faster than the reference value. Since the beta driver we had to use with this graphics card does not support Overdrive (and our overclocking utilities were unable to properly detect the graphics card), we had to leave this overclock level. An AMD representative promised us another video card for testing, but it arrived at our laboratory a few hours before the embargo was lifted, so we did not have time to run tests on it.

Getting the GeForce video cards to work at the required frequencies was also not easy, since both models at our disposal used factory overclocking, and the newest 196.21 driver caused our overclocking utilities to fail. RivaTuner, MSI Afterburner and Gigabyte Gamer HUD Lite became unstable on our test system. Additionally, our GeForce 9500 GT test sample used DDR3 memory, and with it, video cards are too expensive for a fair comparison.

So we used our 9500 GT graphics card, namely a factory overclocked Gigabyte GV-N95TD3-512I, with the old 195.62 driver to get our overclocking utilities working, after which we lowered the core frequency to 550 MHz and the memory to 450 MHz . This should give us results comparable to the GeForce 9500 GT at stock clock speeds. We decided to maintain the 50 MHz memory clock advantage over the reference DDR2 model to mitigate the noticeable latency disadvantage that DDR3 memory provides.

As for the GeForce 210, we left the clock speeds at the factory level and used the latest 196.21 driver. Why did we do this? The fact is that the overclocked Gigabyte video card on the international market sells for $42, which is noticeably lower than the $50 for the Radeon HD 5450.

Of course, the Radeon HD 5450 is clearly aimed at light-duty gaming, but we still ran a full battery of tests at low settings to see if the card could handle our favorite games.

Tests and settings

Test results

Our only synthetic 3DMark Vantage test showed the Radeon HD 5450 to perform slightly better than its predecessor, the Radeon HD 4550, but slightly below the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and significantly below the Radeon HD 4650. The GeForce 210 is barely capable of half the from the synthetic result 5450.

The Far Cry 2 results are similar to those of the 3DMark synthetic test, except that the new Radeon HD 5450 does not provide a noticeable advantage over the 4550. And this despite an increase of 50 MHz in the core and 100 MHz in the memory frequency. Overall, the new graphics card delivers performance a couple of frames per second lower than the previous model.

Our results in this run are more theoretical, as they are at or below 20 fps. However, it should be noted that the Radeon HD 5450 can still provide a more or less acceptable gaming experience at 1280x1024 resolution with medium settings if you lower the resolution of the shadow maps. Of course, it should be noted that the Radeon HD 4650 video card performs much better in games. On the GeForce 210, on the other hand, you won't be able to play in all resolutions.

In order for the Crysis game to run properly on the Radeon HD 5450 video card, we had to set all the settings to the lowest level, leaving only textures and physics at the medium level. If you want to see shadows in this game, then you should set the shader and shadow detail to at least average level. So while the Radeon HD 5450 delivered barely acceptable performance at 1280x1024, it was far from impressive. Once again, the Radeon HD 4650 video card dominates the competition, and the Nvidia GeForce 210 turns the game into a slideshow.

World in Conflict is often limited by the CPU, but on slow video cards the GPU quickly becomes the bottleneck. Fortunately, for this game, high frame rates are not so important; real-time strategy players are often content with fps levels below 30. The balance of power that we saw from previous tests, it has not changed here, the new Radeon HD 5450 video card remains an acceptable solution only at 1280x1024. The GeForce 210 shows poor performance, while the Radeon HD 4650 once again outperforms its competitors.

With shaders set to medium, but with all other detail options at maximum, Left 4 Dead is still one of the best-looking games on the market, and it doesn't require very high graphics performance. Even GeForce 210 in this mode gives acceptable speed. The new Radeon HD 5450 is still inferior to its predecessor, although both video cards cope well with a resolution of 1680x1050. The Radeon HD 4650, on the other hand, didn't even drop the average frame rate below 70 fps in high definition.

H.A.W.X. - another very beautiful game, although it has relatively low graphics requirements. However, none of the low-end video cards could cope with it. Radeon HD 4650 is the only graphics card that can play H.A.W.X. Please note that the GeForce 9500 GT does not support DirectX 10.1, so we tested it in DirectX 10 mode. However, 10.1 mode does not provide any particular advantage to video cards that support it.

We included the DiRT 2 game as a test of DirectX 11. Unfortunately, DirectX 11 support doesn't really matter here, since all the advanced effects are cut due to the medium detail setting. It was necessary to get more or less acceptable performance from the low-end Radeon HD 5450. So, although the transition to a new shader model does not lead to a drop in performance, you still do not get the advanced effects of DirectX 11. Crowd and water effects are disabled at medium settings, although this is where DirectX 11's tessellation improvements appear.

Even with detail reduced to medium, the Radeon HD 5450 is barely playable. Again, the Radeon HD 4650 video card left competitors at a similar price far behind.

We used the game Left 4 Dead to evaluate the performance of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Unfortunately for the Radeon HD 5450, this game does not highlight the strengths of the video card in the best way. In any case, on this video card we got acceptable performance at 1680x1050 even after enabling 4x MSAA and 8x AF. When the picture quality enhancement features are enabled, the new graphics card performs on par with the Radeon HD 4550.

Let's move on from gaming performance evaluation to power consumption tests.

You can see that the Radeon HD 5450 uses slightly less power than the Radeon HD 4550 and slightly less than the GeForce 210, although the new graphics card offers much better gaming performance. In addition, the Radeon HD 4650's relatively high gaming performance comes at the cost of increased power consumption. However, on a global scale, the increase in power consumption by 43 W under load cannot be called that significant.

The difference between the temperatures of the GPU and the ambient air is shown.

All measured temperatures are quite acceptable, but the new Radeon HD 5450 performed quite well for a video card that uses passive cooling. It can be noted that the GeForce 9500 GT is a Gigabyte model with a large third-party cooler, as a result of which the temperature under load remains relatively low. The GeForce 210 also performs well, but it is the only video card in the bottom three that uses an active cooler rather than a passive radiator.

Now that we've seen the capabilities of the new Radeon HD 5450, we can safely say that this is the least impressive video card from the Radeon HD 5000 line. However, this model should not have impressed anyone. It is designed to work only, delivering higher performance than integrated solutions, to bring Eyefinity technology to the masses. This passively cooled video card is also well suited for a home theater, since it provides high-resolution audio transmission in encoded format to an external receiver (bitstream). And all this for $50.

All this is quite good considering the price. Indeed, the video card takes the feature set for low-end models to a completely different level. In this regard, the Radeon HD 5450 will clearly impress those users who do not need to game, but who want to expand their desktop space with additional displays. HTPC users also have several reasons to rejoice.

But let's be honest. While the new features may be impressive for those who can use them, the average consumer won't get much out of the Radeon HD 5450's capabilities. Most average users are happy with a single monitor, and it's unlikely that many will want to add three displays to their desktop. And receivers with decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats are also rare. Even less common are users connecting an HTPC to such a receiver. Therefore, we see little reason to upgrade the Radeon HD 4550 to the new 5450 model.

In any case, the Radeon HD 5450 can be considered a landmark graphics card, as it clearly raises the bar of expectations for an entry-level graphics card while reducing power consumption. In addition, support for three monitors is now found everywhere.

What's the use of all this for a gamer? If you look at the gaming performance test results, you can immediately see that the Radeon HD 4650 at a similar price is a more powerful solution. In any case, the Radeon HD 5450 can provide acceptable performance at 1280x1024 resolution if the detail settings are set to medium or low. In this regard, a gamer with a small budget will have to make a choice: take a faster card or a slower one, but with support for three monitors. Is panoramic viewing worth the reduced level of detail in your favorite games? Of course, games that lightly load the graphics subsystem (World of Warcraft, for example) will work on an ATI Radeon HD 5450 with three monitors. But you are unlikely to be able to run more “heavy” games.

Update: If you're a gamer on a budget, we recommend waiting a bit until AMD releases a model between the $50 Radeon HD 5450 and the $100 Radeon HD 5670. The company has already announced that we will have a 5500 line, so it is logical to expect that we will get higher performance than the Radeon HD 5450 at a lower price than the Radeon HD 5670. Such a graphics card will be a much more attractive solution for gamers with those on a limited budget who want to play on three monitors in the Eyefinity configuration.

Low-mid-level graphics card with support for DirectX 11. It is manufactured using 40 nm technology and is built on the Park (Pro) architecture, designed specifically for entry-level discrete cards. Unlike the faster HD 5470 model, Radeon HD 5450 does not support GDDR5.

Since the frequency is HD 5450 and HD 4570 are the same, then the 3D gaming performance of these cards should be approximately at the same level. Therefore everything modern games should work fine on low and medium settings. Demanding games like Crysis, NFS Shift or Modern Warfare will run on the HD 4570 only with low detail and low resolution. Less resource intensive games like Left 4 Dead should run on high settings.

The Mobility 5470 memory interface is formed from a single 64-bit controller that can connect to (G)DDR2 or (G)DDR3. If a laptop manufacturer uses DDR2 graphics memory for the card, performance may be significantly lower.

HD5450 has 80 MADD processors (called stream processors), which are grouped into 16 5-dimensional groups. The core supports DirectX 11 features in hardware (tessellation, OIT rendering of transparent polygons, improved filtering and shadow rendering, more advanced post-processing, improved HDR Texture Compression). Compared to the HD 5600 and 5700 series, which have 400 cores, the HD5400 has a significantly smaller number, which indicates a significantly lower computing power of this video card, 108 versus 360-520 (for the HD 5650) GigaFLOP But due to the high frequency, the difference in performance may not be so noticeable.

AMD also optimized the HD 5000 series for general tasks (the HD4000 series did not have such optimization). Therefore, threading performance in OpenCL and DirectCompute 11 applications should be noticeably better.

The Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series has an improved video processor (UVD2), allowing HD video decoding using the graphics card. The new version can provide dual-stream decoding of HD files simultaneously (for example, for Blu-Ray picture-in-picture), although only if the graphics card has a wide enough memory bus. With the release of Flash 10.1 Beta, all 5000 series graphics cards are also capable of accelerating Flash HD videos (like YouTube).

In addition, one more interesting feature The HD 5000 series is its ability to transmit audio in HD format (similar to Dolby True HD or DTS HD Master Audio), up to 8 channels and 192 kHz / 24 bit via 1.3a HDMI. Just like the HD 5000 series for desktop computers, Mobility HD 5450 supports Eyefinity, which allows you to connect 4 monitors to the graphics chip. In other matters, in most laptops it is possible to use only three screens at the same time - two external ones, connected through the corresponding outputs located on the laptop body, and one internal one (laptop display).

Energy consumption HD 5450 a little better than 4570 And 5470 (which have 13-15 W each), so this card can be successfully installed in small laptops. This was achieved thanks to Memory Clock Scaling and Clock Gating technologies. Additionally, the chip supports PowerXpress (with AMD chipset) and Switchable Graphics (with Intel chipset), which allows you to switch between discrete and integrated graphics (with improved switching time).

The debut of the youngest member of the AMD Evergreen family, the Radeon HD 5450, will be appreciated by HTPC owners and companies producing complete PCs. The HD 5450 will also be useful for those users who are looking for a budget alternative to integrated graphics.

Characteristics of ATI Radeon HD 5450

The new product is based on a 40-nanometer Cedar chip, consisting of 292 million transistors. Its structure contains 4 rasterization units, 8 texture units, 80 stream processors and a 64-bit memory controller.

The card's power consumption under load does not exceed 19.1 W. Other advantages of the HD 5450 are simultaneous image output on three displays, support for DirectX 11, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, as well as modest heat dissipation, allowing you to limit yourself to a small aluminum radiator on GPU. The rear panel contains DVI, HDMI and D-Sub interfaces.

To reduce the cost of serial products, AMD recommends installing DDR2/DDR3 RAM chips (not to be confused with GDDR2 and GDDR3) with frequencies of 800 and 1600 MHz, respectively, on graphics adapters of this series. The memory capacity will vary from 512 to 1024 MB.

Gaming performance for the Radeon HD 5450 is of secondary importance. The new product is slightly inferior to the representative of the previous generation HD 4550 and, at the same time, turns out to be stronger than the competing NVIDIA GeForce 210.