SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5450 1GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Video Card $15 MIR + Free Shipping

Looks great!

Card is barely worth $10. Not even suitable for HTPC use. Completely limited to websurfing and youtube.

Quote from LxMxFxD : Card is barely worth $10. Not even suitable for HTPC use. Completely limited to websurfing and youtube.

theres reviews saying 1080p working flawless though

Quote from LxMxFxD : Card is barely worth $10. Not even suitable for HTPC use. Completely limited to websurfing and youtube.

Not even suitable for HTPC use? I don't know about that. In February 2010, AnandTech called the 5450 the almost-perfect HTPC card. Have HTPCs really advanced so much in the last two years that the card is no longer suitable? Sure a GT 430 or a HD 6570 might be preferable, but a HD 5450 will get the job done to most people's standards.

Quote from LxMxFxD : Card is barely worth $10. Not even suitable for HTPC use. Completely limited to websurfing and youtube.

wrong. actually this card is totally suitable for htpc if all you're doing is htpc stuff (no gaming though obviously)

i had an even lesser version of this card and it did everything a htpc should do perfectly fine (hd youtube, surfing but who really surfs on their htpc?, blu-ray, etc.)

the lesser version that i speak of was this identical brand/model but with only 256MB of ram and only 32-bit bus! this has four times the ram and double the memory bus. (i got this through an amazon price mistake where i made 3 dollars on the card after rebate)

however, you're correct on this card being worth 10bucks at best

Quote from iamidle : wrong. actually this card is totally suitable for htpc if all you're doing is htpc stuff (no gaming though obviously) i had an even lesser version of this card and it did everything a htpc should do perfectly fine (hd youtube, surfing but who really surfs on their htpc?, blu-ray, etc.) the lesser version that i speak of was this identical brand/model but with only 256MB of ram and only 32-bit bus! this has four times the ram and double the memory bus. (i got this through an amazon price mistake where i made 3 dollars on the card after rebate) however, you're correct on this card being worth 10bucks at best

orly?

"After encountering the video decoding limitations of the 5450 in our review of that card, we had been expecting the 5570 to finally fill the role of the perfect HTPC card. Since we had already seen that the 5670 had full video acceleration capabilities under any circumstance, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for the 5570 to deliver a repeat performance.

Unfortunately that hasn’t come to pass, in fact if anything its proven the 5450 isn’t quite as good of an HTPC card as we first thought."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2935/3

Please l2reAd prior to posting.

Quote from LxMxFxD : orly? "After encountering the video decoding limitations of the 5450 in our review of that card, we had been expecting the 5570 to finally fill the role of the perfect HTPC card. Since we had already seen that the 5670 had full video acceleration capabilities under any circumstance, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for the 5570 to deliver a repeat performance. Unfortunately that hasn’t come to pass, in fact if anything its proven the 5450 isn’t quite as good of an HTPC card as we first thought." http://www.anandtech.com/show/2935/3 Please l2reAd prior to posting.

lol ya rly. r u s3r310us?

you selectively chose the intro paragraph to that article and you're waving it around like the internet forum troll you are. did you even read the rest of that article? do you even understand what they're talking about in the paragraph you quoted? if you did, then you'll realize that they're specifically talking about a very specific option in the drivers that *only* enthusiasts would ever look into.

i'm willing to bet 99% of htpc users have *never* looked into it and will never run across it in their normal use of an htpc.

i actually owned a 5450 before. have you? im speaking from experience that my weak little htpc was able to do everything i needed it to do. watch HD youtube or any other HD streaming, watch any and all of my HD videos/shows without ever slowing down, and watch entire blu-ray movies without a hitch as well. yes this was on a 1080p tv.

oh but i must be wrong cuz you've read an intro to an article which says the card is not fast enough in one very specific scenario in which 99% of the general population will never encounter, which is decoding video when ESVP is enabled whenever AMD's UVD2 decoder is used.

thinking of getting this for my N40L

Quote : It was designed to work, to offer better-than-integrated graphics performance, to enable Eyefinity for the masses, and to give the HTPC enthusiasts bitstreaming from a passive card. And it does these things on a $50 budget.

http://www.tomshardware.com/revie...,2549.html

Please note, this was with DDR3 and 512MB, which are all this card really needs. To sum this up and all the other reviews - I've posted several times on these cards - for an HTPC, especially one for an "out of the box" user, this card and its drivers are close to ideal. If you need one of these now, this is an OK deal. With a little bit of waiting, you should be able to get one for $10 or less. Personally I would get an HD 6540 in the $20 price range, as they are even a better value, with twice the shader processors and still very low power consumption. You can even do light gaming on the HD 6450, or step up to the HD 5570 which can enable most of the bells and whistles for video processing. However, you can expect to pay quite a bit more for a silent HD 5570, those are NOT the ones we keep seeing for $40-50 AR.

+1 to iamidle's response. The Anandtech comments refer to video optimization features and how they were implemented in the AMD drivers at the time.

Anyone dumping on this deal, please feel free to post a better deal for a $15, low profile, passive, bit streaming HTPC card. The only one I know of is the $10 512MB 5450 here, if you want to sacrifice some RAM+bandwidth and save a few bucks.

These are great for basic HTPC use. There are cards that are a little better at video, but they're more expensive, and/or bigger, and/or use more power.

Quote from LxMxFxD : orly? "After encountering the video decoding limitations of the 5450 in our review of that card, we had been expecting the 5570 to finally fill the role of the perfect HTPC card. Since we had already seen that the 5670 had full video acceleration capabilities under any circumstance, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for the 5570 to deliver a repeat performance. Unfortunately that hasn’t come to pass, in fact if anything its proven the 5450 isn’t quite as good of an HTPC card as we first thought." http://www.anandtech.com/show/2935/3 Please l2reAd prior to posting.

lol, I use a 4350 as my HTPC GPU. It's worse than the 5450 and yet still does everything I want. If your HTPC uses some crazy media format, it may not work. Anybody else, this is great. I think I'm in so that when I upgrade my receiver, I'll have HD-audio.

don't listen to the troll. this is a solid deal if you need a cheap card.

edit: never mind; i thought the $15 rebate made it free. meh deal.