AMD Unveils Radeon HD 6450 Entry-Level Graphics Card
 

AMD apparently unveiled its new entry-level GPU, the Radeon HD 6450 today, with some leading sites publishing mini performance reviews (check out Today's Reviews on the front page). The new GPU is intended to be an integrated graphics substitute, which gives desktops all the essential features that today's desktop environments demand, such as DirectX 11 support, Aero acceleration, various kinds of HD video hardware acceleration features, apart from the obvious benefit of discrete GPUs: not taxing the system memory as frame buffer.

The HD 6450 is based on the 40 nm Caicos GPU, it packs twice the amount of shader compute power as the previous generation, packing 160 VLIW5 stream processors, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs, and a transistor count of 370 million. The 160 stream processors, with a core speed of 625~750 MHz (differs between AIBs), churn out compute power of up to 240 GFLOPs. It packs a 64-bit wide memory interface, that supports GDDR5 (clocks: 3.20 GHz to 3.60 GHz) and GDDR3 (1066 MHz to 1600 MHz). It has an idle board power of 9W, and max board power of 27W. Most implementations are low-profile single-slot, some even passive. The reference board features display outputs that include DVI, HDMI 1.4a, and D-Sub. Expect a $50~$60 price point. The official announcement however, is slated for April 19, or at least that's what we were told.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/11-04-07/43a_thm.jpg

Image Courtesy: TechReport

PCIe x4 would have been nice. x16 slot clearly not needed for performance reasons, and x4 would make it compatible with more mainboards particularly as a secondary GPU...

Nice to hear we can expect a passive version.

I wonder what this device is "equivalent to" in old-card terms. Do you think it would match the performance of an old x800 or HD3650? Looking at the TPU GPU database it is hard to assess. Shame the database doesnt include some kind of rudimentary performance metric or benchmark.

probably better than HD3650, as it is closing to GT220 performance.
I'd say gaming performance is more like HD4650.
But who'd buy this card for gaming (even as a casual gaming) anyway?

someone one with a seriously low budget who would also overclock it to make up for the lost fps

160 ALUs?!

This should have been called the HD 6150.

It's about as powerful as an HD 2600 Pro, from 4 years ago.. and costs about half as much.

Yuck.

It has twice the processors as 5450 (and probably twice the performance), hence 6450 sounds round about right. Brazos has 6310 has 80 stream processors if you have forgotten about that.

you cant expect a lot for gaming, HTPC's are more considerable..

I can play Starcraft 2 with my Mobility HD4570, so you can definitely game a bit on these.

It'll provide nice boost from the IGP nevertheless.
Damn, when will AMD release the 6670 on to the retail market?:shadedshu

more like a high end HTPC card with low end gaming capability.

Doubling the shaders and using gddr5 is definitely a step in the right direction albeit a small one. I would have preferred to see something in the range of 200-240 shaders instead tho :p
AT puts it roughly 75% ahead of the 5450

A passive version with GDDR5 would be a great upgrade from my HTPC's ATI 3450.

you need at least tri-sli gtx580`s to play any game.

Really? I thought dual 590's was the only way to play console ports these days? :p

On the face of it this looks like a great HTPC card. Unfortunately as Anand have shown the HD5570 is only slightly more expensive, significantly faster and only sips 10w more power under load (and a similar amount more when idling).

As long as the HD5570 is around the HD6450 is a poor choice (unless there is a specific feature it has that the HD5570 lacks).

I have only noticed full height an dual slot passive 5570's, really half height, single slot an preferably passive are the best options for many HTPC's including my own.

Half height and passive (looks to be single slot):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...56&subcat=1699

Half height with active cooling:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...56&subcat=1699

EDIT: In both cases I assume the card comes with both full height and half height brackets.

No, dual 590's is what you want to use if you hate your computer and want to burn it down. tri-sli 580's is the bare-minimum for actual work.

OK you got me there :laugh: both half height and passive i meant so the second one is a no but the first is 100% perfect for my HTPC case due to the PSU placement as half height passive card where the heatsink goes over the top of the card as it almost touches the PSU fan grill helping it cool better.

:laugh: oh my mistake :p

It does look like a sweet card for HTPC uses. It is only the GDDR3 model rather than the faster GDDR5 model but for light gaming and all HTPC uses it should be fine. I was only able to drag out the links so quick because it is something I am researching for myself at the moment. My wifes Turion II / HD4250 laptop is starting to chug a bit for HTPC uses so I want to build a decent HTPC which can encompass some light gaming as well.

What case are you using if you don't mind me asking?

Is this card better than my 7600GS???
How much better?
Just to know!

The only reason for GDDR5 on a low end card is if it had a 64bit bus otherwise GDDR3 is not too bad.

I'm unsure on the name of the case as i cant find it but it looks almost exactly the same as this apart from the power switch and its black not blue
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/...110-TS?$S300W$

Full size cards fit but press pretty hard against the PSU fan grill as it sticks out on the PSU i have.

That's exactly what I was thinking myself.

So when can we expect a review? I'm in the market possibly to build an HTPC

A Caicos for desktop is kinda "meh" these days. I'd say the latest sandybridges are more interesting for "pure" HTPCs because of the dedicated hardware for high-performance video encoding/decoding.




I'd expect these GPUs to come in some notebooks with the A4 series of Fusion APUs, which already have this exact same GPU (for Crossfiring, of course).

Crossfired Caicos... imagine a thin-and-light 11.6-13" notebook with the performance of a HD5650, that's about it.