MSI Radeon HD 6450 - Good budget card for R600g?

[Hamish Wilson]

I am looking into getting two cheap AMD cards for two of my brothers to use with the R600g driver and the one with the most compelling specs seems to be the MSI R6450:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...108&CatId=3669

Still, I have heard some bad things about the 6450, so I wanted to ask if anyone has some experience with the card. Nothing to intensive will be done with them - if it can play games like Trine, Prey, and Amnesia acceptably like my Diamond Radeon HD 4670 (which I am very happy with) can it will do just fine.

[bridgman]

IIRC the 6450 has very roughly half the processing power of a 4670 -- 6450 has half the shaders, clocks are a bit higher, but memory bandwith is lower. Tom's "Hierarchy of Graphics Cards" puts the 4670 ~5 steps above the 6450.

The 6450 pretty much splits the difference between the older *4** parts and the older *6** parts, if that helps.

EDIT -- Yikes, I see how you ended up picking that card. The next fastest one is more than twice the price...

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...907&CatId=3669

Anyways, check the performance numbers... the 6450 will probably be slower than your 4670, question is whether it is too much slower. I would look for a 5550/5570 or 6550/6570 if you can find one at a good price.

[Calinou]

Nope. Save money (don't smoke, drink, eat too much... the list goes on) and buy an used NVIDIA graphics card like a 9800GTX (about 60-80 euros used). It works fine with Nouveau, BTW.

If you need a better one then you'll need to buy more recent graphics cards.

[pingufunkybeat]

Nope. Save money (don't smoke, drink, eat too much... the list goes on) and buy an used NVIDIA graphics card like a 9800GTX (about 60-80 euros used). It works fine with Nouveau, BTW.

Yeah, and he'll need a nuclear power plant to go with it

HD6450 is an extremely low-powered card that is passively cooled. It is quiet, and it needs virtually no power. The 9800GTX is no replacement in any possible way.

FWIW, I can play Trine, Amnesia and OpenArena with r600g on a passive HD4550, and IIRC, the 6450 should be comparable to that, or a bit faster. It's an acceptable experience, but if you're serious about games, you might want to go a level higher.

[crazycheese]

Yeah, and he'll need a nuclear power plant to go with it

HD6450 is an extremely low-powered card that is passively cooled. It is quiet, and it needs virtually no power. The 9800GTX is no replacement in any possible way.

FWIW, I can play Trine, Amnesia and OpenArena with r600g on a passive HD4550, and IIRC, the 6450 should be comparable to that, or a bit faster. It's an acceptable experience, but if you're serious about games, you might want to go a level higher.

No. 9800GTX does not need much. Especially if you pick "Green Edition", for which 75W are sufficient.
Its problem lies elsewhere - its old card of near-legacy generation. The chip is 55nm at best, mostly 60nm, the cards are not produced anymore hence the chance of blowing up is not covered.

I would go AMD route, but pick ANYTHING that has at least 128bit of GDDR5.

[Hamish Wilson]

Anyways, check the performance numbers... the 6450 will probably be slower than your 4670, question is whether it is too much slower. I would look for a 5550/5570 or 6550/6570 if you can find one at a good price.

Well, it is not like I am trying to replace my 4670 with one of them, so I can accept it not being quite as good as my current card. The 6450 is certainly better than the 2400 that my brother has, and better than the Nvidia in my other brother's machine. And the price looks about right...

After all, I got my current card off of Kijiji for $40 CAD because the person who was selling it was a rich kid who did not know the true value of the card (he used it for one month and then bought a completely new gaming rig) so all this proves is that I scored myself a rather awesome deal when I did that. Still, I might look into Kijiji again, considering everything.

Nope. Save money (don't smoke, drink, eat too much... the list goes on) and buy an used NVIDIA graphics card like a 9800GTX (about 60-80 euros used). It works fine with Nouveau, BTW.

Well, I don't smoke, I don't drink, I am only 145 pounds, and we are buying one of these to replace a NVIDIA card with Nouveau. Besides, if I am spending money, I am making sure the money goes to AMD (well, somewhat).

FWIW, I can play Trine, Amnesia and OpenArena with r600g on a passive HD4550, and IIRC, the 6450 should be comparable to that, or a bit faster. It's an acceptable experience, but if you're serious about games, you might want to go a level higher.

Good to know - the 2400 my brother has currently struggles with Trine. And while I am serious about games, I am not serious about modern blockbusters, so...

[pingufunkybeat]

Good to know - the 2400 my brother has currently struggles with Trine. And while I am serious about games, I am not serious about modern blockbusters, so...

On HD4550, Trine is playable, but you won't be able to go full blast, full detail in 1080p. Similarly, I finished Doom3 and Quake4, and it was fine, but in 1080p with all bells and whistles it became too slow. Same thing with Amnesia. OpenArena, Goo, pretty much everything else flies.

HD6450 will be slightly faster, but not much.

I actually bought HD4550 years ago because it was the cheapest thing out there while I was waiting for drivers to mature. It turned out perfectly suitable for desktop and light gaming, so I never got around to replacing it, but if I were buying now, I'd probably go for something slightly more powerful just so I can turn all the bells and whistles on in full HD and still have a smooth experience.

[bridgman]

Sounds good. The 6450 should be a bit faster than a 2600 and definitely faster than a 2400.

Think "chip 4x as fast as 2400, memory a bit faster than 2400" so overall performance somewhere in between.

[Hamish Wilson]

On HD4550, Trine is playable, but you won't be able to go full blast, full detail in 1080p. Similarly, I finished Doom3 and Quake4, and it was fine, but in 1080p with all bells and whistles it became too slow. Same thing with Amnesia. OpenArena, Goo, pretty much everything else flies.

1080p? We only have 17" monitors anyway.

How is 1280x1024 for you?

[Calinou]

I am making sure the money goes to AMD (well, somewhat).

herewego.jpg with the "vote with your wallet" illusion.

Yeah, and he'll need a nuclear power plant to go with it

Passive cooling is overrated, if you want something quieter, buy an SSD instead of an HDD, use good PSUs... Electricity is cheap too. I bet you use suspend instead of shut down? AMD CPUs and GPUs still use more power and make more noise, again. Their lifespan is also shorter (at least for GPUs).