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

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by Rob Williams on February 4, 2010 in Graphics & Displays

This past fall, AMD launched its latest graphics generation with the high-end HD 5870, and today, it looks to the opposite end of the spectrum with its $50 HD 5450. Though inexpensive, the HD 5450 has a surprising amount of spunk. Coupled with its passive design and full media capabilities, it looks to be the ideal solution for your HTPC.

Page 6 – F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

Five out of the seven current games we use for testing are either sequels, or titles in an established series. F.E.A.R. 2 is one of the former, following up on the very popular First Encounter Assault Recon, released in fall of 2005. This horror-based first-person shooter brought to the table fantastic graphics, ultra-smooth gameplay, the ability to blow massive chunks out of anything, and also a very fun multi-player mode.

Three-and-a-half years later, we saw the introduction of the game’s sequel, Project Origin. As we had hoped, this title improved on the original where gameplay and graphics were concerned, and it was a no-brainer to want to begin including it in our testing. The game is gorgeous, and there’s much destruction to be had (who doesn’t love blowing expensive vases to pieces?). The game is also rather heavily scripted, which aides in producing repeatable results in our benchmarking.

Manual Run-through: The level used for our testing here is the first in the game, about ten minutes in. The scene begins with a travel up an elevator, with a robust city landscape behind us. Our run-through begins with a quick look at this cityscape, and then we proceed through the level until the point when we reach the far door as seen in the above screenshot.

The HD 5450 continues to shine in the test here, far surpassing the performance of the 210. There’s just no comparison.

Graphics Card
Best Playable
Min FPS
Avg. FPS
NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
45
95.767
ATI HD 5870 1GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
65
91.34
ATI HD 5850 1GB (ASUS)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
51
73.647
NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB (EVGA)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
39
62.014
NVIDIA GTX 275 896MB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
37
57.266
NVIDIA GTX 260 896MB (XFX)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
29
48.110
ATI HD 5770 1GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
31
47.411
ATI HD 5750 1GB (Sapphire)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
27
39.563
NVIDIA GTX 250 1GB (EVGA)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
24
36.331
ATI HD 5670 512MB (Reference)
1920×1080 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
31
46.87
NVIDIA GT 240 512MB (ASUS)
1920×1080 – Max Detail, 0xAA
30
45.039
NVIDIA GT 220 1GB (ASUS)
1280×1024 – Medium Detail, 0xAA
22
29.869
ATI HD 5450 512MB (Reference)
1280×1024 – Medium Detail, 0xAA
17
27.149
NVIDIA 210 512MB (ASUS)
1280×1024 – Low Detail, 0xAA
17
28.569
Intel HD Graphics (Clarkdale)
1280×1024 – Low Detail, 0xAA
20
34.388

With the performance as good as it was with medium detail, we left that as our best playable.

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Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.

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