In the test 15 years ago: the Radeon HD 5450 was useless for gaming, but otherwise the first 23 comments
The ATI Radeon HD 5450 (test) was the cheapest entry model 15 years ago with a price of around 45 euros. Despite DirectX-11 support, it was not aimed at gamers due to low performance – which was expected as a result but for HTPCs and desktops.
RV810 as Winzling GPU
With the RV810 with 292 million transistors, the ATI Radeon HD 5450 relied on a very small GPU, which was very energy efficient thanks to the modern 40nm manufacturing process. In terms of computing power, technical data data are expectations. For example, there were only two SIMD units on the RV810, while it was on the RV870 20. In the end, the HD 5450 remained almost 104 Gflops theoretical computing power and a memory bandwidth of 12.8 GB / s in the tested model of Sapphire with 512 MB of DDR3 memory. If you wanted to save something from the already low price, you can also acquire models with slower DDR2 memory.
RADEON HD 4550 RADEON HD 5450 RADEON HD 5670 GEFORCE 9500 GT CHIP RV810 / CEDAR RV830 / Redwood G96 Transistors 242 million approx. 2927 million production 55 nm 40 nm Chiptakt 600 MHz 650 MHz 775 MHz 550 MHz Shaderstakt 600 MHz 650 MHz 775 MHz 1400 MHz Shadder Units Shadher 775 MHz 1400 MHz
(MADD) 16 (5d) 80 (5d) 32 (1d) Flops (MADD / ADD) 96 Gflops 104 Gflops 620 Gflops 134 Gflops ROPS 4 8 pixelfüllrate 2,400 MPIX / S 2,600 MPIX / S 6,200 MPIX / S 4,400 MPIX / S TMUS MPIX / S 6,200 MPIX / S 4,400 MPIX / S TMU 8 20 16 Taus 8 20 16 Texelfüllrate 4,800 Mtex / s 5,200 mtex / s 15,500 mtex / s 8,800 mtex / s shader-model sm 4.1 sm 5 sm 4.1 hybrid-cf / -sli – effective empties
Power saving function ✓ – Memory quantity 512 Mbyte DDR3 512 MBYTE DDR2 / 3
1,024 MBYTE DDR2 / 3,512 MBYTE GDDR5 512 MBYTE GDDR3
512 Mbyte DDR2 Storage Clock 800 MHz 2000 MHz 800 MHz (GDDR3)
400 MHz (GDR2) Backup interface 64-bit 128-bit Bandwidth 12,800 MBI
12,800 MBYTE/S (DDR2)
The tested model of the Radeon HD 5450 relied on a passive cooler in a low-profile single-vote design. With a maximum power consumption of 19 watts, the graphics card did not require extensive cooling or an external power supply away from the PCIe slot. To connect the displays, there was a D-Sub, DVI, and display port connection on the slot cover.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 Image 1 of 7
Not for gamers
In benchmarks, the ATI Radeon HD 5450 delivered a weak performance as expected based on the technical specifications. In the test, it was only tested below 1280 × 1024 pixels, as performance was realistically too low for higher resolutions. At this low resolution, it fell just behind the predecessor generation Radeon HD 4550 and achieved almost a quarter of the performance of a Radeon HD 5670.
Although the Radeon HD 5450 is hardly suitable for gamers, it was able to convince completely in the B grades. Thanks to the passive cooling, the graphics card was completely silent, the power consumption was excellent and if you really needed the extra performance, you can expect around 15% more power when overclocking. With these properties, the Radeon HD 5450 was predestined for use in HTPCs or desktop computers. For this, it offered support for up to three monitors and was able to play Blu-rays.
Conclusion
Despite the very weak gaming performance, the Radeon HD 5450 was convincing. If you were looking for a simple graphics card with modern skills, but low power consumption and noise level to match, you have come to the right place. With a price tag of almost 45 euros, there was quite a bit to complain about price-wise.
In the category “in the test 15 years ago”, the editorial team has taken a look at the test archives every Saturday since July 2017. We list the last 20 articles published in this series below:
Scythes Top Blow-Koloss Grand Kama Crossdie Geforce GT 240 with 1,024 Mbyte DDR3 War Sinnlosamds Radeon HD 5670 Bot DirectX 11 for 79 EuroHTCS Touch2 was a savings smartphone for 270 Euro Advant A Smartphonew Super Mario Bros. in Wannabe was also a Geforce GT 240 at Hitnvidia was at the Wii had to be Teinenenoctuas NH-D14 was the ultimate CPU air cooler. radar 11intels Core i5-750, i7-860 and i7-870 on Socket 1156
Even more content like this and many more reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner of the TechAstuce forum.
Topics: Radeon Retro Gaming Graphics Cards
An engineer by training, Alexandre shares his knowledge on GPU performance for gaming and creation.
