Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Graphics Cards > ATI Radeon HD 5450: Eyefinity And HTPCs For Everyone?

Test Setup And Benchmarks

05:40 - Thursday 4 February 2010 by Don Woligroski

We decided to test the Radeon HD 5450 against its primary competition in the $40 to $50 price segment. This includes its predecessors, the Radeon HD 4550 and 4650, the GeForce 210 and DDR2-based GeForce 9500 GT.

First we must note that the Radeon HD 5450 sample we received was gifted with a 900 MHz memory clock, 100 MHz faster than the reference specification. Since the beta driver necessary for use with this card didn't support Overdrive, and our overclocking tools weren't able to properly work with the card, we were stuck with the overclock. It's unfortunate that this happened and an AMD representative even sent us an apology and an offer to retest with a new card, but they didn't send the offer quickly enough to reasonably give us enough time to make our deadline. As a result we're testing the overclocked card. On the bright side, 100 MHz over a pathetic 64-bit memory bus probably isn't going to do squat, it's roughly equivalent to a 25 MHz overclock on a 256-bit bus. But we thought you should know, regardless.

We tested the Radeons 4550 and 4650 with AMD's newest Catalyst 10.1 driver, and both of these cards came equipped with the reference clock speeds. No need to tweak anything here.

Getting the GeForce cards to do what we wanted proved to be a little more complicated as both were factory overclocked models, and the newest 196.21 driver broke all of our overclocking tools -- Rivatuner, MSI afterburner, and even Gigabyte's Gamer HUD lite were rendered useless on our test system. In addition, the GeForce 9500 GT test sample we had was a DDR3 model that is priced too high to be appropriate for the comparison.

Our solution for the 9500 GT, a factory overclocked Gigabyte GV-N95TD3-512I, was to use the older 195.62 driver to enable overclocking tools and then underclock the core to 550 MHz and the memory to 450 MHz. This should give us results comparable to an off-the-shelf DDR2 model of GeForce 9500 GT. We allowed the 50 MHz memory speed advantage vs. the reference DDR2 model in an attempt to negate the notable latency disadvantage that the DDR3 memory would suffer from.

As for the GeForce G 210, a Gigabyte GV-N210OC-512I, we left the clock speeds at the factory setting and used the newest 196.21 driver. Why did we do this? Mostly because we couldn't underclock it and didn't realize until later that the driver was to blame. We didn't have time to re-test, but the results remain valid for two reasons: firstly, the overclocked Gigabyte card can be purchased for $42 online -- notably below the Radeon HD 5450's $50 price tag. Far more importantly however is the fact that the GeForce G 210 is so incredibly slow as a gaming card that the overclocked result is rendered irrelevant.

While the Radeon HD 5450 is admittedly intended for low-impact gaming scenarios, we will put it through a gamut of game tests at lower settings to see if the card is suitable for low-detail use in more demanding titles.

			Graphic Test System
CPU			Intel Core i7-920 (Nehalem), 2.67 GHz, QPI-4200, 8MB Shared L3 Cache Overclocked to 3.06 GHz @ 153 MHz BCLK
Motherboard			ASRock X58 Supercomputer Intel X58, BIOS P1.90
Networking			Onboard Realtek Gigabit LAN controller
Memory			Kingston PC3-10700 3 x 1,024MB, DDR3-1225, CL 9-9-9-22-1T
Graphics			ATI Radeon HD 5450 650 MHz Core, 900 MHz Memory, 512MB DDR3 Memory factory overclocked 100 MHz above reference Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 600 MHz Core, 400 MHz Memory, 512MB DDR2 Diamond Radeon HD 4550 600 MHz Core, 800 MHz Memory, 512MB DDR3 Gigabyte GeForce 9500 GT 650 MHz Core, 1,625 MHz Shaders, 800 MHz Memory, 512MB DDR3 Underclocked to 550 MHz core, 1375 MHz shaders, 450 MHz memory to simulate reference DDR2 9500 GT Gigabyte GeForce GT220 720 MHz Core, 1,566 MHz Shaders, 800 MHz Memory, 1GB DDR3
Hard Drive			Western Digital Caviar WD50 00AAJS-00YFA 500GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB cache, SATA 3.0 Gb/s
Power			Thermaltake Toughpower 1,200W 1,200 W, ATX 12V 2.2, EPS 12v 2.91
Software and Drivers
Operating System			Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit 6.0.6001, SP1
DirectX version			DirectX 10
Graphics Drivers			AMD Catalyst 10.1, Nvidia GeForce 195.62 (GeForce 9500 GT), 196.21 (GeForce G210)

Benchmark Configuration
3D Games
Crysis	Patch 1.2.1, DirectX 9, 64-bit executable, benchmark tool Low Quality, Medium Textures, Physics, and Sound, No AA
Far Cry 2	Patch 1.02, in-game benchmark Medium Quality, No AA
DiRT 2	Version 1.0.0, Custom THG Benchmark Run 1: Medium Settings, No AA, DirectX 9 Run 2: Medium Settings, No AA, DirectX 11
World In Conflict	Patch 1009, DirectX 9, timedemo Medium Details, No AA/No AF
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.	Patch 1.02, DirectX 10 & 10.1, in-game benchmark Low Shadows, Sun Shafts Medium View Distance, Environment, SSAO High Forest, Textures HDR, Engine Heat, and DOE On, No AA
Left 4 Dead	Version 1.0.1.5., Custom THG Benchmark High Settings, Medium Shaders, 4xAA, 8xAF
Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings
3DMark Vantage	Version: 1.02, PhysX Off, 3DMark scores