Feb 4, 2011 21:31 GMT  ·  By

Together with the Radeon HD 6670 and Radeon HD 6570 graphics cards based on the Turks core, AMD has also quietly unveiled the entry-level Radeon HD 6450 GPU which is built on top of the Caicos architecture and is destined to replace the painfully slow HD 5450.

Just as the other two new additions that made their way into the HD 6000-series, the Radeon HD 6450 is only available to OEMs for now, no details regarding a possible retail channel launch being disclosed until now.

Compared to the card it replaces, the Radeon HD 6450 is certainly a step in the right direction as AMD has decided to double the number of stream processors available to the Caicos core.

As a result, the card now packs 160 SPs, as well as 8 texturing units, 16 Z/Stencil ROP units and 4 color ROP units.

The clock speed of the GPU has also been modified from the 650MHz that came standard with the HD 5450 to anywhere between 625MHz and 750MHz, depending on the wishes of the OEMs.

More importantly, the card can now be configured with faster GDDR5 memory, AMD allowing for up to 1GB of GDDR5 video buffer to be installed that can be clocked between 800MHz and 900MHz.

Slower DDR3 memory is also available, AMD stating the operating frequencies can be set anywhere in the 533Mhz to 800MHz range.

Just as its faster brothers, based on the Turks, Barts, and Cayman architectures, the HD 6450 also features the UVD 3 media engine that allows for Blu-ray 3D playback.

The card can support DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 1.4a, dual-link DVI with HDCP as well as VGA video outputs.

Power consumption figures were not made available, but the HD 6450 pictured on AMD's website carries a passive radiator, so its TDP can't bee too high.