14 DAY TRIAL // For months now, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has been, whether directly or indirectly, filling the web with news, reports, rumors and listings of GPU cards with DirectX 11 graphics capabilities. Even its most recent central processing unit line was only barely capable of grabbing end-user attention in the midst of the HD 5670 and rumors of the upcoming Radeon HD 5830 (although the latter may have been delayed if reports prove accurate). The latest in the string of DirectX 11-capable GPU reports has AMD preparing to launch the Radeon HD 5450 card for the low-end segment.
The launch will supposedly come sometime next week or next month but, either way, when it does debut, NVIDIA still won't have released any DirectX 11 products of its own. The card will supposedly be based on the Cedar graphics processing unit and will have 80 stream processors, a 64-bit memory interface and a GPU frequency clocked at 650MHz. The card will have 1 GB of GDDR3 memory, which will run at 1600MHz.
Quite obviously aimed at entry-level systems, the product will supposedly replace the ATI HD 4650, HD 4550 and HD 4350 graphics cards. Digitimes previously reported that the HD 5450 would be out before the middle of February, with more recent rumors saying it would be launched the following week. This means that the new GPU card will have the entry-level market to itself for about a month or more, until the Fermi comes out (and if the initial lineup from NVIDIA has a model aimed at the low-end).
In a more unexpected but rather interesting and ironic turn of events, it seems that the MSI R5450-MD512H Radeon HD 5450 is already being listed on eBay. This card has only 512MB GDDR3 (half the stock amount) and a 64-bit memory interface. It is priced rather low at $62.99.