System setup and notes
| Graphics cards | AMD Radeon HD 5450 512MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB | Sapphire
Radeon HD 4200 IGP 256MB |
Inno3D GeForce GT 240 512MB | BFG
GeForce GT 220 1,024MB |
XFX
GeForce 210 512MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £40 (as tested) | £53 | N/A, part of motherboard | £70 | £50 | £32 |
| DirectX / Shader Model | DX11, 5.0 | DX10.1, 4.1 | DX10.1, 4.1 | DX10.1, 4.1 | DX10.1, 4.1 | DX10.1, 4.1 |
| Stream processors | 80 | 320 | 40 | 128 | 48 | 16 |
| GPU clock | 650MHz | 750MHz | 500MHz | 625MHz | 625MHz | 589MHz |
| Shader clock | 650MHz | 750MHz | 500MHz | 1,340MHz | 1,360MHz | 1,402MHz |
| Memory clock (effective) | 1,600MHz | 2,000MHz | 1,333MHz | 3,600MHz | 1,580MHz | 800MHz |
| Memory bus width (bits) | 64-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 64-bit |
| CPU | AMD Athlon II X3 440 (3.0GHz, 1.5MB L2 cache, tri-core, AM3) | |||||
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-MA785GPMT-UD2H (AMD 785G + SB710 chipset) | |||||
| Motherboard BIOS | F5 | |||||
| Memory | 4GB Corsair PC10667 | |||||
| Memory timings and speed | 9-9-9-24 2T @ DDR3-1,339MHz | |||||
| PSU | Corsair CX400W | |||||
| Monitor | Dell 2405FPW Widescreen 24in TFT | |||||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (3Gb/s mode) | |||||
| Graphics driver | Press driver (8.69-091211a-094275E-ATI) | Catalyst 10.1 | Catalyst 10.1 | ForceWare 196.21 | ForceWare 196.21 | ForceWare 196.21 |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit | |||||
Software
| 3D benchmarks | Call of Duty: Modern
Warfare 2, low quality Crysis, low quality Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.5, HEXUS custom-recorded benchmark. OpenGL, low quality Far Cry 2 v1.03, low quality H.A.W.X v1.2, internal benchmark: DX10/10.1, low quality |
|---|---|
| General benchmarks |
Power draw |
Notes
We've sandwiched the Radeon HD 5450 512MB card by two NVIDIA GPUs that make up the low-end line. The GeForce GT 240 is included as reference only, to see what spending nearly twice as much money buys you from a performance perspective.On the AMD side of things, the last-generation Radeon HD 4670 DDR3 card is still available for around £50. Is it worth spending the extra and buying something older, from a games-playing perspective. We find out.
As the HD 5450 will be one of the cheapest R5K cards released, we also take a look at IGP performance of the Radeon HD 4200 (785G chipset) and determine if a discrete GPU still makes implicit sense.
Benchmarks were conducted at 1,280x1,024 and 1,680x1,050, although the IGP was run at 1,280x1,024 alone, due to inconsistent, unplayable performance at the higher resolution.
