Radeon HD 5000 series gets budget chipset

AMD this morning launched its least expensive video chipset capable of DirectX 11 (and OpenGL 3.2) graphics. The ATI Radeon HD 5450 has all the same visual effects as the 5600 and 5800 lines but is trimmed down to 80 stream processors, 8 texture units and a 650MHz engine clock speed. Besides keeping the price low, the design allows for extremely quiet cards: it can either use a low-speed fan in a single slot or a completely fanless design in a slightly larger space.

The hardware supports Eyefinity to output through and combine multiple displays, and in a reference card carries one each of dual-link DVI, DisplayPort and VGA. It can similarly drive HD video decoding and OpenCL, and two cards can combine in CrossFire mode.

Boards should be available right away from partners like ASUS, MSI and XFX and will cost as little as $60 for a version with 512MB of memory. PC builders are also likely to use the 5450 on their own, though no PCs have been named as using it so far.

By Electronista Staff