14 DAY TRIAL // Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices announced today the expansion of its family of Radeon HD 5xxx graphics cards, with the addition of the new HD 5450 model. Designed to provide a wider range of consumers with the benefits enabled by the card's DirectX 11 capabilities, the new option becomes AMD's lowest-priced 40nm GPU with support for Microsoft's latest API. The new card comes approximately two weeks after the release of AMD's first sub US$100 DirectX 11 card, the HD 5670.
“The ATI Radeon HD 5450 offers consumers another next-generation graphics product from AMD, and further reinforces our price-performance value at a wide range of price points,” said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Division. “With the addition of the ATI Radeon HD 5450, home theater enthusiasts and casual gamers have access to cutting-edge features and solid performance at an incredible value.”
By comparison to all of the previous Radeon HD 5xxx series, the new card features just 80 Stream Processors, coupled with 8 Texture Units, 4 ROPs and 292 million transistors. Codenamed Cedar, the new card has a GPU speed of 650MHz with support for up to 1GB of DDR3 memory, clocked at 1600MHz and a 64-bit memory bus. The graphics processor is built on the same 40nm manufacturing process and features a low TDP of just 19.1W, smaller than what was available with the previous generation, namely the HD 4550.
In addition, the card will offer support for AMD's multi-display technology, ATI Eyefinity, enabling users to enrich their graphics experience by combining three monitors in a single setup. Price-wise, this card will target the value market, with an estimated street pricing of less than US$60, according to AMD. Due to its technical specifications, the new card can be equipped with a passive cooling solution, making it a noteworthy alternative for HTPCs.