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.
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.

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NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB (Reference)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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45
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95.767
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ATI HD 5870 1GB (Reference)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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65
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91.34
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ATI HD 5850 1GB (ASUS)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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51
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73.647
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NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB (EVGA)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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39
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62.014
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NVIDIA GTX 275 896MB (Reference)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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37
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57.266
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NVIDIA GTX 260 896MB (XFX)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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29
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48.110
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ATI HD 5770 1GB (Reference)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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31
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47.411
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ATI HD 5750 1GB (Sapphire)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
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27
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39.563
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NVIDIA GTX 250 1GB (EVGA)
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2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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24
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36.331
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ATI HD 5670 512MB (Reference)
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1920×1080 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
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31
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46.87
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NVIDIA GT 240 512MB (ASUS)
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1920×1080 – Max Detail, 0xAA
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30
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45.039
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NVIDIA GT 220 1GB (ASUS)
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1280×1024 – Medium Detail, 0xAA
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22
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29.869
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ATI HD 5450 512MB (Reference)
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1280×1024 – Medium Detail, 0xAA
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17
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27.149
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NVIDIA 210 512MB (ASUS)
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1280×1024 – Low Detail, 0xAA
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17
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28.569
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Intel HD Graphics (Clarkdale)
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1280×1024 – Low Detail, 0xAA
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20
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34.388
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With the performance as good as it was with medium detail, we left that as our best playable.