It's rare to see a rumor -- hell, even a roadmap -- pinpoint the timing of new releases quite so accurately, but our
earlier report of ATI refreshing the middle and lower parts of its lineup turned out to be bang on. Following in the footsteps of the
HD 5670, we have the Radeon HD 5450, which drags the entry price for DirectX 11 and
Eyefinity multi-monitor support all the way down to $50. Course, the processing power inside isn't going to be on par with its
elder siblings, but that also means the 5450 will run cool enough to be offered with half-height, passive cooling solutions as seen above. ATI's focus here is on media PCs, with a DisplayPort, um... port, alongside HDMI 1.3a, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio
bitstreaming support. For the money, you really can't argue with all this extra multimedia juice, but if you must have benchmarks to sate your soul, check out the early reviews below -- they're full of bar charts and performance comparisons, don't you know.
posted February 4th 2010 2:56AM
Video editing?
Still no answer from NVDIA, are they pulling off video card?
If you read the Anandtech review, they point out that the 5450's shader's aren't powerful enough to handle all the post-processing that you'd want from an HTPC card. The main issue is de-interlacing, so if you can live without that, you're fine. Also though, the card (at least ATI's version) comes with DisplayPort, VGA, and DVI, but no HDMI. You'll need an adapter or to get a version that replaces one of the ports with HDMI.
For my next build I'll probably go with the 5670 just so I know I'll get the best HTPC experience. I don't play PC games, so it'll be plenty for me, and not much more expensive.
@flux Yea that lack of HDMI is what kills it.
@flux What content are you storing on an HTPC that is interlaced? Most of the HTPC folks I know are building for BD and native progressive content for playback. Of course, if you are capturing ATSC (OTA DTV) its questionable of you are really looking for a 1080P deinterlacer from a po-folks solution.
@(Unverified) Most of the content I watch isn't interlaced, I was just pointing out the few drawbacks that the AnandTech article mentioned. Personally I don't watch much interlaced stuff, but I don't like the idea of having a card that can't even handle all the post-processing I might occasionally need. I might be overkill for what I watch on a regular basis, but a faster graphics card helps in other areas of computing, too. The PC I'll be building will be my main computer, but I'll have an HDMI run to my receiver for HTPC action. So I'll be getting at least a 5670 since I'll be keeping the computer around awhile.
From 54 seconds onwards the game and desktop are boxed on the monitor - they forgot to teach the monkeys about GPU panel scaling!
this is so cheap i'm debating my choice to use an i3 for my media center build. I have no desire to game so i wonder if ill be able to get a cheaper old quad core with this card or should i just go for the i3 that does this on board. Hmmmm
@normychas
This will be more than sufficient for HTPC! I just got Radeon HD 4550 and my old Dual Core E6600 media center PC is flying with Windows 7 and Media Center. It can easily decode 1080p. This one might even be an overkill :)
For a media center build, this fan free design is nice; and besides consoles are for games :)
I run a 4670 1GB with an Arctic Cooling heatsink (no fan) and it works fantastic. You can see that it is about 4-7 times faster than the 5450 in the benchmarks for the same cost (Add $20 for the heat sink if you want silence).
Not sure why they came out with this card.
Probably for those of us that do not have room for a full size card... I will buy this card for the low profile and HD audio support. The lack of a fan will help as well.
I wonder how this benches compared to the clarkdale IGP? Article maybe? Budget HTPC showdown? :-)