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.

Introduction

If it feels like we just took a look at a brand-new ATI graphics card mere weeks ago, don’t worry… we did. From the middle of last month to the middle of this month, AMD has a schedule to round-out its entire budget line-up, and although the Radeon HD 5670 sits comfortably at $100, the card we’re looking at today, and the HD 5570 due out next week, both retail for well under that price point.

The HD 5670 was a bit of a strange beast, because while it’s not what anyone would consider a mainstream gaming card, it delivered more than enough performance to handle all of today’s games at up to 1080p. For a $100 offering, the card had a great performance/watt ratio, and with after-market coolers, as we saw with Sapphire’s version of the card, the temperatures are ideal for any sort of use, including HTPC.

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• READ MORE (Source): ATI’s Radeon HD 5450 – The Perfect HTPC Card?: Introduction – Techgage