Sapphire provides Eyefinity on the cheap with the Radeon HD 6450 FleX

[Cristian_25H]

If all you want this Christmas is an Eyefinity setup but can't afford to invest much in a graphics card then you may be interested in Sapphire's latest creation, the Radeon HD 6450 FleX. This card comes with a sub-60 Euro price tag and is able to power three DVI monitors right out of the box.

Sapphire's HD 6450 FleX takes up two PCI slots, comes with a blue PCB and features a passive cooler, 160 Stream Processors, a GPU clock of 625 MHz, a 64-bit memory interface, 1GB of DDR3 memory set to 1600 MHz, UVD (Unified Video Decoder) 3, and three display outputs, a single-link DVI, a dual-link DVI, and a HDMI 1.4a port (a HDMI to DVI adapter is included in the box).

The Radeon HD 6450 FleX can be found on pre-order priced as low as 54.37 Euro.

[btarunr]

That is so cute.

[entropy13]

Originally Posted by btarunr

That is so cute.

Well if you need multi-monitor support for a SFF (with the use of the included half-height bracket) and/or a silent system, here's a good choice.

[bostonbuddy]

who's buying three monitors for eyefinity and not putting in a monster video card?

[btarunr]

Originally Posted by bostonbuddy

who's buying three monitors for eyefinity and not putting in a monster video card?

Those who need three monitors for the infinitely more things you can do with computers other than gaming.

[Zakin]

I'm actually quite a fan for a cheap three monitor solution.

[Completely Bonkers]

Cheap, but still quite a premium. For that price you could buy TWO regular 6450's and get FOUR screens and TWICE the compute power.

What kind of performance could we expect out of this passive GPU? Would it serve as a useful side-grade for older machines...

AMD Radeon™ HD 6450 GPU Feature Summary
625-750 MHz engine clock
512MB-1GB DDR3/GDDR5 memory
533-800 MHz DDR3 (1.066-1.6 Gbps) or 800-900 MHz GDDR5 (3.2-3.6 Gbps) memory clock
8.5-12.8 GB/s (DDR3) or 25.6-28.8 GB/s (GDDR5) memory bandwidth
200-240 GFLOPS Single Precision compute power
TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture
160 Stream Processing Units
8 Texture Units
16 Z/Stencil ROP Units
4 Color ROP Units
GDDR5/DDR3 memory interface
PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
DirectX® 11 support
Shader Model 5.0
DirectCompute 11

[Zakin]

Would probably be more of a situation where you are limited to a single slot, you're correct though, could be slightly cheaper for what it is. I can probably find 5770/6770s for that price on a deal.

[theJesus]

Originally Posted by Completely Bonkers

Cheap, but still quite a premium. For that price you could buy TWO regular 6450's and get FOUR screens and TWICE the compute power.

Can you even do crossfire with 6450's? If not, then you certainly won't gain any extra performance. The only benefit of doing that would be 4 screens vs 3. However, I would wager that most people needing something like this don't even have multiple PCI-E x16 slots.

[MikeMurphy]

Clever product

I've always liked Sapphire stuff. Makes for a good entry level benchmark.

[Completely Bonkers]

You gain performance across screens, not performance in any ONE screen. Wasnt talking about physical CROSSFIRE.

Lets say you had 4 screens running security cams. Or two or more videos running on separate monitors, e.g. video editing. TWO cards will survive this task, whereas one card would struggle.

You would probably get better compatibility if you wanted to run one screen DirectX while keeping the others at the desktop. Or indeed running a wall-of-maps, or financial tickers.

So you DO get better performance running two cards. Just not for single screen gaming. Unless of course there is a "software workaround" crossfire-concept driver.

[theJesus]

Alright, I misunderstood and was also not aware of that, so thank you. Even still though, I'm not sure how many people needing something like this have more than one PCI-E x16 port.

[Completely Bonkers]

Spot on, this should be an x4 or x8 card. Agreed.

[blibba]

Arguably x1 tbh, though I don't know how the smaller pci-e slots get on delivering power.

[Mussels]

my brother would be all over this like fanboys on a driver thread, they have to run multi monitor setups at his work and they often resort to really weird, expensive hardware to get it working.

[Trackr]

This thing is as powerful as a GT 220.

I understand the approach, but you can't do ANY triple-monitor gaming with that.

This is STRICTLY for non-gaming.

I wish there was something in the middle.. but eventually there will be so it's ok.

[devguy]

Originally Posted by Trackr

This thing is as powerful as a GT 220.

I understand the approach, but you can't do ANY triple-monitor gaming with that.

This is STRICTLY for non-gaming.

I wish there was something in the middle.. but eventually there will be so it's ok.

Here's your middle ground. A 5770 won't handle much gaming at Eyefinity resolutions, but should be able to handle slightly older games (think ID Tech4 or Source) just fine, and won't cost nearly as much as a triple DVI Cayman card.

Or just buy any old HD 5xxx/6xxx with eyefinity, and an active DP->DVI adapter for ~$30 and be done with it.

[newtekie1]

If you need more than 2, just add a second card. The price premium on this just isn't worth it. If you don't have a second PCI-E x16 slot, dremel down the second card.

[Jizzler]

Nice. I've had situations where a card like this would have been the desirable solution.

[yogurt_21]

Originally Posted by btarunr

Those who need three monitors for the infinitely more things you can do with computers other than gaming.

I don't follow

[theJesus]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

If you need more than 2, just add a second card. The price premium on this just isn't worth it. If you don't have a second PCI-E x16 slot, dremel down the second card.

Some of us like warranties

[blibba]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

If you need more than 2, just add a second card. The price premium on this just isn't worth it. If you don't have a second PCI-E x16 slot, dremel down the second card.

Originally Posted by theJesus

Some of us like warranties

Furthermore, there are those people without multiple free slots at all, especially in the SFF systems this is aimed at.

Originally Posted by yogurt_21

I don't follow

Seriously? I suspect troll, but just in case:

You know those other things you do on your PC? You know, like, when you're not gaming? Yeah. A lot of that can be done better on multiple screens. Who'd have thought? An especially big market is those into stock trading, but really more desktop real estate is useful on a day to day basis.

[Chevalr1c]

Sapphire (and others) should be smarter when it comes to packaging. That CG woman radiates to much "gaming" for an office/multimedia card. Atleast Club3D does it right with their black box that has the phrase "for multimedia" printed on it.

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by theJesus

Some of us like warranties

On a $10 card? I couldn't care less about the warranty. It's probably going to cost me just as much to send it in as it will to just replace it...

Originally Posted by blibba

Furthermore, there are those people without multiple free slots at all, especially in the SFF systems this is aimed at.

You already have to have 2 slots, because this is a dual slot card. So no, if you don't have multiple free slots, then this card isn't aimed at you. And right now I've got 4 monitors connected to one of my shop's machines, using just $20 in graphics cards, taking up the same 2 slots as this card, in a SFF case...

If they had made this a single slot card, then it might have been more interesting and worth looking at.

It actually amazes me how many people think that more than 2 monitors wasn't possible before eyefinity. Eyefinity isn't the ability to use more than 2 monitors, it is the ability to use them as a single display. Which actually isn't ideal for most multi-monitor setups outside of gaming.

Originally Posted by blibba

Seriously? I suspect troll, but just in case:

You know those other things you do on your PC? You know, like, when you're not gaming? Yeah. A lot of that can be done better on multiple screens. Who'd have thought? An especially big market is those into stock trading, but really more desktop real estate is useful on a day to day basis.

It is Yogurt being silly. Trust me, he knows.

[blibba]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

You already have to have 2 slots, because this is a dual slot card.

If you want to be pedantic, the card makes some sense for people who cannot place two regular low end cards in their system. Maybe they have a mini-itx board with a two expansion slot case. Maybe they have two expansion slots and one is PCI, or perhaps it's pci-ex1 and they don't want to get busy with a dremmel. Who knows. Maybe they just think a single card is more elegant.

Also, I'm pretty sure nobody in this thread implied that >2 monitors was impossible pre-eyefinity. I don't see how one would arrive at that conclusion.