Power Consumption

Just like with the Blu-ray playback, adding a graphics card means a higher idle and load power use. This naturally means its performance to power consumption factor is the lowest too, with its direct competitor, the Core i3-530, up ahead by a few orders of magnitude.

Conclusion

What the Radeon HD 5450 graphics card brings to the party depends on what you want it for. It doesn't help general productivity - it might reduce the demand on the main memory by integrated graphics, but this, in our test, makes no difference to real world CPU performance. Essentially, it's adding to the system cost when you don't need it. Office PCs, for example, will find integrated graphics is more than capable for doing things that people in suits and offices do.

If you do dabble in gaming, for PCs plugged into TVs at a 720p HD resolution the Radeon HD 5450 offers a more impressive and fluid gaming experience than onboard graphics. That said, while it's a step up, it's not a huge climb up the ladder. £40 buys you a few more FPS but with a 3D image that still look incredibly basic - this has always been the case at this price though, so we still strongly recommend saving up a little longer - even just £20 more - for something much more capable, while on a budget.

The best part about the Radeon HD 5450 is its capacity as a feature leading HTPC device (despite the current issues with MPC:HC, and there's plenty of other software out there). If you do invest a little cash in a 785G motherboard with low power Athlon CPU, it can then easily be upgraded with a small, low profile, passively cooled HD 5450 should you get serious with your Blu-ray watching at a later date. If you do get serious, then the Core i3-530 is the better choice straight out the box: it does everything the HD 5450 does, features wise, with the same overall system costs, but featuring a CPU and GPU in one chip means lower power usage. As it's an Intel CPU, it also offers better 2D performance in general.

Given the comparative cost of a stand alone Blu-ray drives, the PS3 factor, or one of the many bespoke h.264 HD-capable media players out there available for a fraction of the price - we fell that we may be looking at the last gasp area of the HTPC, an opinion the HD 5450 does nothing to change.

The Radeon HD 5450 directly challenges Intel's GMA HD in the HTPC realm and certainly exceeds it for gaming, but in other areas - total system price, power usage - it's outmoded. Still, AMD's 890GX IGP is out in less than a month, so there remain plenty of interesting developments to come from the red team.

• Features
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• 9/10

• Performance
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• 7/10

• Value
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• 9/10

• Overall
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• 8/10

Score Guide