Introduction

AMD's Radeon HD 6450 has been on the market for almost two months now. It is the slowest, cheapest, entry-level HD 6000 card. When it was launched, AMD provided HD 6450 samples to the press which used GDDR5 memory clocked at 900 MHz.

However, when looking at the current market, we only see HD 6450 variants using DDR3 memory, instead of the faster, more expensive GDDR5. That's why we decided to take a look at a DDR3 version to provide a clearer picture of the entry level graphics card market.



Sapphire's HD 6450 uses a completely passive low-profile design, which makes this card an excellent choice for a low noise office PC or media PC system. The media PC usage model is supported by the HDMI output which includes audio of course for an easy to install solution. Despite being a low-end graphics card, the card comes with AMD's UVD 3 engine which supports acceleration of all relevant video encoding methods.

Packaging

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD + Documentation
• Low profile bracket + analog VGA output bracket

The Card

Sapphire's card is a low-profile PCB design which can be converted to an actual low-profile card by removing the analog VGA connector.


The card requires just a single slot in your system. Even though the heatsink covers a small area of the back of the card, I don't expect this to have any effect on installation in small form factor cases.


Display connectivity is one DVI port, one full size HDMI port and one removable analog VGA output. On higher-end AMD cards we usually see quite expansive display output options, the HD 6450 limits them slightly by using a DVI output that does not carry an analog VGA output signal. Nevertheless, you may still use up to three displays at the same time.

An HDMI sound device is included in the GPU, too. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible which includes HD audio and support for Blu-ray 3D movies. The DisplayPort interface is DisplayPort 1.2 compliant which allows the use of a DisplayPort hub to connect multiple monitors, or daisy chain them together.


You may combine up to two HD 6450 cards from any vendor in a multi-GPU CrossFire configuration. A physical CrossFire connector is not present, all multi-GPU data is transferred via the PCI-Express bus.


Pictured above are photos of the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.