Radeon HD 6450
Positioned as a Jack-of-all-trades GPU, the £35-plus HD 6450, available with 512MB or 1GB memory, is pushed as being particularly suitable as a cheap solution for multi-monitor setups while still providing a modicum of DX11 multimedia application and gaming performance.
But, as we pointed out on the first page, the same positioning and thinking also applies to the Radeon HD 5450, released over a year ago, though this new model has just a little more firepower under the hood.
Due to be made available in both fan-assisted and fan-less models - the add-in board partner has the choice - the HD 6450 pulls a maximum of 27W when going at full chat. This drops to 20W for the DDR3 version.
Architecturally, it sits between the Radeon HD 5450 and HD 5550 GPUs. There are 160 stream processors clocked in at 625-750MHz. AMD keeps consistency with other models by allocating a 20:1 ratio of stream processors to texture units. On the back end the card has four ROPs which link out to either DDR3 or GDDR5 memory via a 64-bit memory bus. The inclusion of G5 is a particularly nice inclusion for a bargain-basement card.
But this talk of ROPs and SPs is missing the point somewhat. Rather, the UVD3 video-processing block and multi-display technology is where the focus should be; this ain't a proper gaming card, no matter what AMD says.
