Introduction

AMD's Radeon HD 6450 has been on the market for almost two months now. It is the slowest, cheapest, entry-level HD 6000 card. When it was launched, AMD provided HD 6450 samples to the press which used GDDR5 memory clocked at 900 MHz.

However, when looking at the current market, we only see HD 6450 variants using DDR3 memory, instead of the faster, more expensive GDDR5. That's why we decided to take a look at a DDR3 version to provide a clearer picture of the entry level graphics card market.



Sapphire's HD 6450 uses a completely passive low-profile design, which makes this card an excellent choice for a low noise office PC or media PC system. The media PC usage model is supported by the HDMI output which includes audio of course for an easy to install solution. Despite being a low-end graphics card, the card comes with AMD's UVD 3 engine which supports acceleration of all relevant video encoding methods.