Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 - 1 GB DDR2 HDMI/DVI-I/VGA PCI-Express Graphics Card 100292L

Comment: I work in a bank and we do not allow video games on the work pc;s. I needs a card that I could push two monitors at the same time. I have one hooked up through the DVI and the other HDMI. Works perfectly. Not much else to say. It works for want I need better than the card built into the mother board.

Comment: I couldn't pass up a killer deal a local retailer had for an H55 motherboard and i3 530(over half off msrp) so I embarked on building a little HTPC. 4 gig of ram, 3 2TB WD Greens, 2 optical drives(one blu-ray, one dvd as to not wear out the blu-ray when not in use), and a partridge in a pear tree. Anyhow the onboard video on the I3 was ok. Not stellar, but decent. It could play blu-ray but once in a while I'd see a strange artifact or a dropped frame, just enough to annoy me. Hulu was terrible even with the flash 10.1 drivers in Win7, the GPU offloading didn't help when the GPU was so weak.

Sooooo, I picked up this little gem. It has fulfilled everything I expected, silent, cool, and capable. Any video format plays flawlessly, from Blu-ray, MKV, xvid, anything. Hulu runs great, silverlight(netflix) is superb, and I even get about 45fps in WoW at 1080p with the settings on medium. Stock it got a 3.8 WEI in Win7, overclocked it gets a 4.2. A great part of this thing is how little juice it uses. My total system power measured with a Kill-a-watt is about 40w at idle and web surfing, 55w while playing a blu-ray, and 80w while playing CoD2 MW. That is absolutely fantastic. In comparison my gaming rig pulls 350w at idle and almost 900w while gaming, sure its a great phallic extension, but is it really necessary?

I ran a 25' hdmi cable and a 25' usb cable(for the wireless keyboard/mouse dongles) through the wall to the back of my 55"er and my htpc is in my den with a 24" LG hooked in via DVI. I setup a hotkey to swap displays so this one little card either runs a 55" LED monster, or a modest little desktop PC. I considered a 5750 fanless, but those put out too much heat. I run the I3 fanless with a thermaltake hyper tx-3(the fan is connected but runs at 0% pwm until 50°C which the CPU never gets to), fanless video card, fanless power supply, with a single 120x38mm SilenX FDB running at 600rpm cooling everything and the drives are in silenX luxurae cases. The system is inaudible from anything over 6" from the fan inlet, and if one of the optical drives are spun up.

I'd dock this one star because it's the ddr2 version, but it's just that great of a little card it needs 5. For the same price pick up the ddr3 version or for a hair more the ddr5 version.

This isn't for gamers, this isn't a workhorse, this is a low power, low profile, low heat, SILENT card that works great.

Comment: I'm not one for long reviews.

My computer runs Windows 7 64bit. I use media center for all my DVR needs, and I output to an HD front projector in my home theater room.

This card replaced my GeForce 7600, which was very old but still ran pretty well. The main reason I bought the Sapphire 5450 was because AMD/ATi finally put out a nice card that would pass HD audio through HDMI to the source. I was using optical SP/DIF before. The card does everything I am used to at good speeds. It's not much good for gaming, but I'm not a gamer so I don't care.

Great price for a great HTPC card. I recommend it.

Comment: I bought this card for a business computer. I am running two monitors, and was excited when I saw that the card had three ports (DVI, analog and HDMI). It runs any two monitors just fine, but in order to use the HDMI port as part of a three monitor set-up you need an active adapter or a monitor with an HDMI input. The only direct adapter solution I have found - active HDMI to DVI or VGA - is around $120 (the HDMI to DVI cable I tried was $8.00). There are a few AMD approved active MiniDisplayPort to HDMI adapters/dongles available for around $20, but they are female HDMI to male MiniDP, and what you need is male HDMI to female MiniDP, so you can then hook the HDMI to DVI cable up (don't know for sure if this will work but it should).

I am looking for the right adapter but I have a feeling it doesn't exist. Aside from that, the card works exactly like I want. The dual, extended monitor setup is simple and intuitive and the graphics quality is fine. There are enough setup alternatives to tune the displays as much as you would want.

I am using it with two 19" 4:3 ratio, 1280 x 1024 LCD monitors, and have tested it with a 20" widescreen in the loop as well as with an old Hitachi 22" 828 CRT and the card was fine with all combinations. The tech specs say it needs a 400w power supply, but I have it in a cheap Dell with a 300w power supply and there have been no problems. The best part is that is is passively cooled... dead quiet. No heat problems in my setup as a business machine with the most demanding requirement the occasional use of Photoshop.

I recommend the product and would buy it again.