ATI’s Radeon HD 5450 – The Perfect HTPC Card?

When the original Call of Duty game launched in 2003, Infinity Ward was an unknown. Naturally… it was the company’s first title. But since then, the series and company alike have become household names. Not only has the series delivered consistently incredible gameplay, it’s pushed the graphics envelope with each successive release, and where Modern Warfare is concerned, it’s also had a rich storyline.

The first two titles might have been built on the already-outdated Quake III engine, but since then, the games have been built with improved graphical features, capable of pushing the highest-end PCs out there. Modern Warfare 2 is the first such exception, as it’s more of a console port than a true PC title. Therefore, the game doesn’t push PC hardware as much as we’d like to see, but despite that, it still looks great, and lacks little in the graphics department. You can read our review of the game here.

Manual Run-through: The level chosen is the 10th mission in the game, “The Gulag”. Our teams fly in helicopters up to an old prison with the intention of getting closer to finding the game’s villain, Vladimir Makarov. Our saved game file begins us at the point when the level name comes on the screen, right before we reach the prison, and it ends after one minute of landing, following the normal progression of the level. The entire run takes around two-and-a-half minutes.

As mentioned in the intro, AMD is targeting this card straight at the GeForce 210, while the upcoming HD 5570 will target the GT 220. So far, the HD 5450 is off to a great start, blowing far past the 210 at both resolutions. While on the 210, 1280×1024 isn’t playable, it is to a much greater degree on the HD 5450.

Please note, all 1680×1050 graphs in this article are included only for the sake of comparison.

After removing some of the special effects (Shadows, Specular Map and Depth of Field), the performance of the HD 5450 shot skyward and gave us some much smoother gameplay.