More than a budget gaming card?
But is that the whole picture?There are a few class-wide benefits of the Radeon 5K range that will count in favour of the HD 5450. Firstly, all cards have better-than-expected power ratings. AMD reckons the HD 5450 can draw a maximum of 19.1W and as little as 6.4W when idling. Such power-draw characteristics make it ideal for passive heatsink cooling.
A second benefit resides with the much-improved multi-monitor support that falls under the Eyefinity branding, where one can run up to six monitors from a single card, although the vast majority of cards will support three, of which DisplayPort (or an active adapter) needs to be one.
We expect most Radeon HD 5450s to be equipped with DVI, HDMI, and VGA, to cater for the largest-possible market, but partners will be keen to differentiate their wares by introducing an eclectic range of outputs on various SKUs.
AMD's video-processing technology UVD 2.2 is carried over, bringing with it dual-stream video decode and bit streaming support for high-definition codecs. Good news for the HTPC crowd, then.
Partner-led innovation
AMD will be providing its partners greater leeway into specifying clock-speeds, types of memory, and frame-buffers on boards. There will undoubtedly be a vast range of HD 5450 boards with slightly different specifications. Caveat emptor!
Summary
AMD's Radeon HD 5450, codenamed Cedar Pro, by dint of its architecture sacrifices considerable 3D performance in order to hit an etail price point of around $49 for the base card. Bolstered by the well-rounded 5K feature-set, it looks to be a good fit for HTPC systems. Let's now take a closer look at a reference card.
