ATI Radeon HD 5450 On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ATI Radeon HD 5450 On Linux

While AMD soon will be introducing the Radeon HD 6000 graphics cards, there is still plenty of life left to the Radeon HD 5000 series especially for those interested in open-source support with the Evergreen GPUs finally being supported by the open-source driver stack complete with OpenGL acceleration via a Mesa driver and this support will continue to mature before there is the same level of support for the next-generation Southern Island GPUs in the open-source world. In this article we are reviewing the ATI Radeon HD 5450 "Cedar" graphics card, which is AMD's lowest-end Evergreen GPU but will set you back less than $50 USD.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15325

[Jimbo]

I don't like the subjective comments of the review. You are being pro nvidia. I would like to see much more objective comments. With plain comments and graphs numbers the reader could see by his own if the card is interesting for him or not. There is no need to remark the parts you like.

1) Right off the bat we see the ATI Radeon HD 5450 run well below that of the NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 or even the previous-generation Radeon HD 4650

2) Even those on a tight budget would be much better off buying a graphics card for $60 USD or more like the NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 that is much more capable...

3) If you are just interested in supporting AMD for their open-source efforts, this is a fine card but obviously with even the proprietary Catalyst driver producing low frame-rates, do not expect much...

4) There is also video playback acceleration via XvBA (the X-Video Bitstream Acceleration) architecture, but that is currently buggy in the latest driver revisions

5) Anyone interested in a low-power, passively-cooled graphics card for a HTPC / media PC still would be much better off getting any NVIDIA

1) ATI 5550 - 5570 performs much better. Specially HIS ATI 5550 & 5570 DDR5, those are 2x - 3x faster than 5450.

2) same as 1

3) Exactly you could expect 70% 3d and 200% performance on 2d vs fglrx. But being the driver currently under heavy development you could find some bugs, only opengl 2.1 ...

4) They are not released xvba, so it is not buggy, simply it is not released.

5) Ok, this one seems more correct. Especially if you want 40 Mbps hidef video. 10 mbps hidef video could be handled by cpu easily.

[Jimbo]

ATI 5550 & 5570 have fanless versions too and are priced 70-80$.

The fair comparison price / performance should be:

ATI 5450 vs GT 210
ATI 5550 & 5570 vs GT 220
ATI 5600 vs GT 240
...

[chrisr]

I don't like the subjective comments of the review. You are being pro nvidia...

Given a choice between buying a "fglrx-only" AMD card and an NVIDIA card, the NVIDIA card would win!

In spades.
Hands down.

[Jimbo]

Given a choice between buying a "fglrx-only" AMD card and an NVIDIA card, the NVIDIA card would win!

Well this is your point of view. Some plp could argue that.

My point is that you cannot write a review for a large audience, mixed from ati fans, nvidia fans and neutral people, and on page 3,4 before writing conclussions or personal reviewer conclussions, write things like for 60$ is better to choose GT220 is out of the context.

You should remain as neutral as possible, then write personal conclussion but trying to be neutral too. Saying that 5450 is a bad card because on 3d unigine demos performs bad is pointless, this is not a gamers card. Saying don't expect too much of OSS is pointless too, OSS 2D works beatifully. Comparing against GT220 is not fair too.

[gbeauche]

I don't like the subjective comments of the review. You are being pro nvidia.

You must be kidding, Michael always looked more pro-ATI than pro-NVIDIA.

4) They are not released xvba, so it is not buggy, simply it is not released.

Huh? It's the same driver used by "other" people where they sold the benefits of that thing. Treating customers like perpetual beta testers is not fair and counter productive. So, it's released as is. Using another term is non sense. The fact you don't have headers or specs is a non problem, since you don't have the headers or specs of other parts of the driver either, though this is released too, isn't it?

[Jimbo]

You must be kidding, Michael always looked more pro-ATI than pro-NVIDIA.

Hmmmm... did you read this review?

[chrisr]

Hmmmm... did you read this review?

Have you ever tried using fglrx ?

[Michael]

You must be kidding, Michael always looked more pro-ATI than pro-NVIDIA.

It seems every other day people switch from calling me pro-NVIDIA or pro-ATI

[leif81]

This seems to be aimed at the HTPC market. Would be nice to see some video playback numbers.