14 DAY TRIAL // AMD designed its ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card as a low-cost solution for entry-level systems in need of DirectX 11 support and a good multimedia solution. As such, the company developed the card very power efficient, even using a passive cooling design. While different incarnations of the card have already been launched by a variety of manufacturers, PowerColor gas decided to release a set that focuses on the prime advantage of the device, namely green computing through low power use. The company has, thus, introduced the Go! Green series cards.
"Wraps with the latest technology and features best-in-class performance, Go! Green HD5450 series was designed with today's consumer’s needs," Ted Chen, TUL CEO, says. "The latest product lineup aims to provide you the best power efficiency and high quality visual entertainment experience for your home theater PC."
Besides the obvious support for DirectX 11, all the products can operate in CrossFireX configurations and have 80 stream processors and a memory bandwidth of 64 bits. All versions have the Cedar graphics processing unit (GPU) running at a clock frequency of 650MHz and the 512MB or 1GB of memory are clocked at either 800MHz or 1334MHz. This memory can be DDR3 or DDR2.
The Eyefinity Version is designed to, obviously, support triple display scenarios, but its specifications are otherwise similar to the others in the line. In fact, all cards are suited for multimedia playback, with the ATI Stream technology even capable of accelerating applications such as HD playback from Blu-ray or other formats. All the Go! Green HD 5450 graphics cards have full support for Windows 7 and the multimedia experience is completed by the total silence enabled by the passive cooling solution.
The Eyefinity version cards have DVI, DisplayPort and VGA connectors, whereas the others use DVI, HDMI and VGA outputs. All models should become available in stores shortly and their prices will likely revolve around the same $60 price point.