AMD Radeon HD 6450

[Kivada]

Yeah, as much as I hate to agree with Q here, I can definitely see this as being a problem. Product placement wise, why the hell would a company put out a chip that is slower than the CPU integrated ones? It makes absolutely no damn sense. It would be kinda interesting to see if switching to a faster memory would result in better results, although, I believe they already produce the 6450 in a GDDR5 version. Where the memory is concerned, it would probably give it the most performance to finally ditch the 64-bit bus on their lowest end GPU and move them all to at least 128-bit.

Simple, There are plenty of people out there buying massively CPU heavy boxes without an IGP, think someone getting an X6 T1100 and an 870 series mobo. This card is essentially a slightly updated version of the HD4290 found on the 890GX IGP, it's about the same money, but has it's own dedicated VRam so nothing is wasted to the IGP.

Yes it doesn't hold a candle to the A series APUs, those are the new low end whil this is the last chip of the old era. It's a good thing as well since the OEMs seem to love making very CPU heavy boxes with cards like this while still using an IGP based mobo and calling it a gaming PC... This new strategy should work well for AMD if they can force OEMs to tot use the Nvidia equivalent of these cards on AMD hardware as this will give PC gaming a much needed sot in the arm by having many more gaming capable machines on the market.

[LinuxID10T]

Remember that discrete GPUs are used with CPUs from other vendors as well, not just from AMD, so it helps to look at the product placement relative to all the desktop systems out there rather than just the latest AMD products.

That said, I usually buy the midrange part (my last board purchase was an HD 5670) so I'm probably not the best person to be arguing the merits of the entry level discrete GPU

Also note that most of the Llano design wins were for notebook rather than desktop, although it does make a pretty slick desktop system. I don't think anyone is suggesting that an HD6450 is the right match for a Llano anyways.

Last entry level discrete GPU I bought was a Radeon HD4350. It was my first new GPU in quite some time and I was just amazed at how much faster it was than both the integrated graphics and the Radeon X300. I also decided to buy it because I didn't want to be stuck with the open source drivers for the X300, which now has EXCELLENT open source support -____- Anyway, for $29 it was totally worth it. I can definitely see where retrograding a previous PC with a low end card would definitely make a difference.

[Kivada]

IIRC a GDDR5 card with 64-bit memory bus is still cheaper to build than a DDR3 card with 128-bit memory bus.

Too bad most will pair this chip with 64-it GDDR2... Below the HD*670 series the variance of vram bus and tech seem to be chosen at completely at random, I still have my old Nvidia 8500GT 128-bit GDDR3 since it outperformed almost all the more expensive 8600GT cards due to them having 64-bit and/or GDDR2 vram even though the 8600 had more shaders to work with, the "faster" 8600GT only pulled ahead when it too was using 128-bit GDDR3. In that case the 8600GTS was the floor for which all cards HAD TO HAVE 128-bit GDDR3.

[bridgman]

Yeah, the problem is that some fairly large percentage of buyers, maybe 99.9999999% or so (plus or minus a couple of '9's), still seem to make buying decisions based on the amount of VRAM rather than the performance characteristics of the memory. As with so many things in life, broken reward systems lead to seemingly undesireable or irrational behaviour. If buyers reward vendors for making cards with lots of slow memory it's not hard to predict what kind of cards you are going to see next time.

On the other hand, having too little memory can result in a fairly sharp performance drop at very high resolutions and this issue seems to be fairly well understood, so one could make a case that spending on amount of memory future-proofs you in a way that buying faster memory can not. By that logic a low end DX11 card with 1GB of DDR3 isn't that bad an idea, although it's not the tradeoff I would make.

[Kivada]

See, the thing is I would never compare it to Ontario's graphics because it is a desktop card while Ontario is integrated for netbooks. It is just with Llano being the desktop processor, I would compare it to a desktop card, such as the HD 6450. That being said, if the audience for the HD 6450 is just people wanting to upgrade an existing PC I could see that. I just can't see where AMD is trying to place it on its new desktop lineup.

There are actually quite allot of Nettops(ITX based systems small enough to be bolted right on the back of the monitor) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883220072 and desktop mobos based around the E-350, which have a PCIe 16x slot. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=1&srchInDesc=

I think it's pretty clear this card is aimed at HTPC's and it's a great product for Windows users. When the gallium3D VDPAU stack matures (and I have faith that it will with AMD's dedicated devs), this could be a perfect card for HTPC and/or general desktop use on Linux. It should be cheaper then too

Meh, it sucks even for an HTPC, better to go with the A series chips so you can at least play most of the HIB games, this chip would fall short of that in several of the titles, Penubra, FrozenByte games etc.

[Qaridarium]

The HD6450 DDR3 is slower than the GPU in a fully-configred Llano but remember that Llano has the *fastest* integrated GPU out there not the slowest. If you compare it with other integrated GPUs (Ontario + competitors products) then it makes a lot more sense..

no sorry bridgman to NOT buy an AMD LLano system and buy a competitors product makes NO sense!

Yes, memory makes a big difference. The performance delta between DDR3 and GDDR5 varies wildly with application but GDDR5 is often 20-40% faster for the same memory size and memory bus. Benchmarks will often show a higher delta but note that the GDDR5 cards are sometimes clocked higher as well.

and how much XDR2 matters? maybe the same 20-40% ?

IIRC a GDDR5 card with 64-bit memory bus is still cheaper to build than a DDR3 card with 128-bit memory bus.

really? i remember the hd4850 vs hd4870... maybe now gddr5 is cheap in the past it was expensiv.

and build an 64bit memory bus system with XDR2 vram is expensiv to...

but yes right now gddr5 is a must have for a 64bit bus card.

[Qaridarium]

Yeah, the problem is that some fairly large percentage of buyers, maybe 99.9999999% or so (plus or minus a couple of '9's), still seem to make buying decisions based on the amount of VRAM rather than the performance characteristics of the memory. [...]
On the other hand, having too little memory can result in a fairly sharp performance drop at very high resolutions and this issue seems to be fairly well understood, so one could make a case that spending on amount of memory future-proofs you in a way that buying faster memory can not. By that logic a low end DX11 card with 1GB of DDR3 isn't that bad an idea, although it's not the tradeoff I would make.

AMD still not sell any Arma2 proved Desktop card thats because arma2 needs more than 2,5gb vram!

my frend prove this with an gtx580 with 3gb vram.

on amd side you have to buy an 4gb vram fireGL card to play the game arm2.

[Kivada]

AMD still not sell any Arma2 proved Desktop card thats because arma2 needs more than 2,5gb vram!

my frend prove this with an gtx580 with 3gb vram.

on amd side you have to buy an 4gb vram fireGL card to play the game arm2.

What? This not the game? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arma2 Cause in came out years ago, and has much more modest requirements then you claim. Turn down the AA settings... If the game is really as heavy as you claim then why does no review site use it as a benchmark? Unigine Heaven and Crysis/Warhead seem to be ubiquitous as the heaviest benchmarks but according to you this game is even heavier?

Though I will say, why was there no Eyefinity6 version of the HD6970?

[Qaridarium]

What? This not the game? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arma2 Cause in came out years ago, and has much more modest requirements then you claim. Turn down the AA settings... If the game is really as heavy as you claim then why does no review site use it as a benchmark? Unigine Heaven and Crysis/Warhead seem to be ubiquitous as the heaviest benchmarks but according to you this game is even heavier?
Though I will say, why was there no Eyefinity6 version of the HD6970?

sure this is arma2. and my friend buy 2 pices of gtx580 with 3GB usable vram on every single pice.
and he benchmark it and watch vram tools.... the game needs more than 2,5gb vram!

means a 2gb vram card only show bad gray areas in some cases because the card can not hold the game textures in vram.

and has much more modest requirements then you claim.

this modest requirement are only a trick to sell the game.

in real world you need a PC like this: 12 cores Opteron 6000 or an intel dualsocket system with 6 core cpus with 64gb of RAM + a 3-4GB vram gtx580 or FireGL card.

and you are doomed in a arma2-wafare-online-fight if you don't have a proper system like this

but according to you this game is even heavier?

sure arma2 is heavier!

Arma2 beats a 12core-64gb ram-4gb vram firegl Quat-crossfireX system!

[Kivada]

Then as before, if it is so heavy then why is it not used as a benchmark on any review site I've ever seen? It sounds like it would actually be a perfect candidate.