Duking it out in the low-end: AMD HD 6450 vs. Nvidia GT 520 Reviews
Posted by Robert Dow on May 18th 2011 | Discuss
Categories:
Hardware Review
Tags:
gpu
nvidia
amd
market
graphics
aib
pmark
This week we focused on the entry level market and tested three AIBs, the Nvidia GT 520, and two versions of AMD boards: the HD 6450 and 6450 GDDR5. Some would argue that any board coupled with GDDR5 belongs in the mainstream segment, however we take a look at price as the determining factor.
The Nvidia GT 520 is based on the GF119 GPU and has a core clock of 810 MHz compared to the AMD 625 MHz DDR3 and the 750 GDDR5 HD 6450s models. Despite the GT 520’s lack of GDDR5, and fewer shaders, the GT 520 more than holds its own compared to the higher end HD 6450 and beats it in a Performance/Dollar comparison.
The accompanying table shows a comparison of the basic specifications.
| GT 520 | HD 6450 | HD 6450 GDDR5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average Performance | 29.3 | 22.0 | 23.0 |
| Core Clock | 810 | 625 | 750 |
| Memory Clock | 897 | 667 | 900 |
| Memory (on-board) | 1GB | 1GB | 512 |
| Memory Type | DDR3 | DDR3 | GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 64-bit | 64-bit | 64-bit |
| CUDA Cores | 48 | ||
| Stream Processors | 160 | 160 | |
| Power (Watts) | 29 | 27 | 31 |
| Displays | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Driver | 270.61 | 11.5 | 11.5 |
| Price | 55 | 55 | 55 |
Comparison of entry-level AIBs
The Test bed is a Core i3 2100 3.1 GHz system based on a ASUS P8H 67-M LX Motherboard with H67 Chipset, 4 GB of RAM, a typical value segment system with one exception, our system had an 80 GB Intel SDD. Value segment systems don’t come with expensive SSDs but the impact is only going to appear in boot up, not game play.
Pmark
Where:
Performance = the average of several tests,
Price = any currency (Dollars, Euros, Yen),
Power = the AIB’s wattage under load.
(Performance is measured in two ways on a graphics AIB, by frame rate (fps), or by an arbitrary score as generated by 3Dmark 11.
The faster HD 6450 with GGD5 won all the performance comparisons, the comparison of price and power is shown in the performance/watt, and performance/dollar charts.
The over-clocked AMD HD 6450 also did the best in the Vantage benchmarks.
However, in specific game tests the Nvidia GT 520 showed very well and held its own against the over-clocked HD 6450 in many of the games.
The boards are quite similar. All have three outputs: DL-DVI, VGA, and HDMI, their power consumption is within 2 watts of each other, and their prices are about the same.
The GT 520 consistently beats the DDR3 based HD 6450 running at 625 MHz while the GTX is running at 810. You can get playable frame-rates from many high-end games which is impressive for a card in the $50-$60 price range; though you are going to have to do some work under the hood to get the FPS of to 30 or more. Turn the resolution down to 1280x1024—No AA, and perhaps sacrifice a full screen view in some games. Though a game player in this segment would expect to sacrifice some luxuries in favor of a playable FPS. .
The over-clocked AMD HD 6450 with GDDR5 showed well in the tests but it’s a laboratory curiosity as far as we can tell. We could not find one for sale except at a French web site advertising a PowerColor board which had no price and defeated us in an attempt to buy it. The HD 6450 GDDR5 might be tough to find in the states. AD says the 750 MHz has a more international appeal.
What do we think?
A lot of graphics performance for not very much money.
Pros
Low cost. Low power consumption. Great price/performance
Cons
Define con: It is amazing value for money. Sure it may not be able to run high end games at high resolution with all graphics features turned on, but the game play is very good.
As this issue was going to press, we ran into this quote from John Carmack, he puts these boards into perspective when he says: “You almost cannot make a bad decision with graphics cards nowadays. Any of the add-in cards from AMD or Nvidia are all insanely powerful.”
Although the Value-segment is under pressure from the AMD Fusion and Intel Sandy Bridge embedded graphics processors, none of them can come close to the performance one of these AIBs offers. The boards are amazingly inexpensive, and will certainly give the user an enjoyable experience. And, they can even drive multiple displays—what’s not to like?
