The battle of the HTPC cards, Galaxy’s GT 520 vs. HD 6450 (GDDR5 vs. GDDR3)
We are nearing the end of our AMD Graphics’ HD 6000 series versus Nvidia’s 500 series evaluations as we now compare their entry level video cards. One might believe that these are the least interesting cards yet they can tell us much about the architecture of their respective series. We are going to evaluate the Galaxy GT 520 and compare it to the HD 6450 – the commonly available 1GB-DDR3 version as represented by the HIS HD 6450 and the much harder-to-find 512MB-GDDR5 version. We will also explore the reasoning behind using super-fast vRAM on an entry-level card versus the far cheaper DDR3.
These video cards are budget gaming solutions as the HIS HD 6450 and the Galaxy GT 520 each etails for $52 and $60 respectively on Newegg.com and the GDDR5 version of the HD 6450 is expected to sell for about $55 in the USA although the Sapphire version has been very hard to find in stock over here. The cheapest GT 520 on Newegg is the ECS version for $47 after $10 mail-in-rebate.
We want to put together a complete picture for you as Nvidia’s GT 430 sells for about the same sixty dollars as these new cards, and the GTS 450, HD 6570 and HD 6670 each sells for around $80 to $100 for the stock and overclocked versions; less on sale or with rebate. We are here to help you to determine what these new video cards bring as we continue to focus on gaming performance. And most importantly we will let you know if you should even bother to use them for PC gaming at all or just buy them for home theater PC (HTPC) as they are advertised as silent or nearly silent.
AMD Graphics and Nvidia are locked in a perpetual battle to one-up each other in what can only be described as a “graphics war”. We have covered this many times and our very latest article covering AMD’s HD 6670/6570 (“Turks”) launch from three weeks ago will bring you right up to date. And now we have GF119 (one-half of a GF108 GPU) which is the smallest possible Fermi as the GT 520 which features 48 stream processors on a 64-bit bus. It is set to replace the GT 420 which has a 128-bit memory interface and we wonder if it fast enough despite its featuring an 810MHz core clock speed, a 1620MHz shader clock and 1GB of 900MHz (double data rate of 1800MHz) DDR3. The card draws up to 29W of power and supports Blu-ray 3D and 3D BluRay video playback.
The HD 6450 was soft launched a few weeks ago and there are only a few 512MB GDDR5 versions available. Only Sapphire has built one so far although Powercolor has announced theirs and it is often out of stock in the USA as it is priced only a couple of dollars more than the much slower DDR3 version. Here it is at NewEgg, in stock and for $55 at time of writing! In Europe, the Sapphire 512MB GDDR5 version is priced about ten pounds more than the DDR3 version and there is stock more regularly available. In fact, you can get a 1GB GDDR5 version of ASUS’s passively cooled HD 6450 for £52.99 including vat. It is rather expensive although it is unique. Here is the specification chart for the HD 6450.
AMD’s reference HD 6450 also has 8 ROPs but it has a very wide range of clocks and power usage depending on if it uses GDDR5 or the slower and much cheaper DDR. When we tested the GDDR5 version of HD 6450 supplied by AMD we chose the Powercolor clocks of 750MHz/900(x4)MHz. It will be interesting to test the two Radeons at their extremes against each other – the low-clocked HIS DDR3 version versus the much more highly clocked GDDR5 version – and also against the stock and overclocked Galaxy GT 520.
We put all of our Radeon cards through their paces this week with the very latest Catalyst WHQL drivers 11.4 This driver brought some good performance increases over the 11-3 Catalyst drivers. We also used the latest 270.61 WHQL drivers for the GeForce cards which also brought good performance increases over the older drivers.
Is the GT 520 worth about the same price as the HD 6450 and the GT 430?
We naturally want to know if the new Galaxy GT 520 card is worth the same approximately $60 as the stock and overclocked GT 430 which is now regularly in the same price range. Please note that we are also testing cards that cost up to $100 so you can see where these entry level cards fit as to performance. We will do the testing and then you can answer these questions for yourself together with us in our conclusion.
We bench with 29 modern games and with 3 synthetic benchmarks generally using 1680×1050 and 1280×720 resolutions. Since we are using entry-level GPU video cards, it makes sense to test them at the highest resolutions and with the most demanding playable settings that they can handle. And of course we will attempt to find playable settings
Features
The new Fermi GF119 GT 520 brings a lot of features to the table that current Nvidia customers will appreciate, including improved CUDA’s PhysX, improved tessellation capabilities and a faster GPU in comparison to their older series. It also can take advantage of Nvidia’s 3D gaming. Perhaps most importantly, the GT 520 is a DX11 GPU whereas the GT 220 (and Sandy Bridge integrated graphics) is DX10.1 and we need to see if the newer GPU can take advantages of DX11 or if it is just too slow.
Galaxy’s GT 520
The Galaxy GT 520 video card comes in a suitable box which protects it in shipping, but it is not a fancy package nor are there any “frills” – Galaxy concentrates on bringing you a great video card with superb support. Inside the box, you will find the driver CD, the most basic of printed instructions with the warranty information including a toll-free 24-hour telephone number. If you call, you are guaranteed to talk to someone if you have any issues for the two years that your card is under warranty.
Since the Galaxy GT 520 is also sold in retail, the box clearly states the specifications and the contents of the box (GT 520 video card, driver CD, and quick start guide) on the outside of the box.
Galaxy also gives you five excellent reasons to upgrade to their GT 520. There are more reasons; they ran out of room on their little box:
Note the key features. You will only need a 300W power supply unit (PSU):
Here is the Galaxy GT 500.
It features VGA, HDMI and DVI connectors.
Let’s turn it over.
As you can see, the GT 520 (bottom) is replacing a physically larger GT 220 (top). That is always good for Nvidia’s partners and their bottom line.
In the picture below we see our three competing cards all in about the same price range with the Galaxy GT 520 (bottom) priced a few dollars more than the 512MB GDDR5 version of the Sapphire HD 6450 (top) which is in turn is a couple of dollars more than the 1GB DDR3 HIS HD 6450 (middle).
Here is the direct competitor – the HIS HD 6450 pictured together with the back of the box.
Notice the emphasis on silence. Beside the HIS HD 6450, you get the driver CD, the user and quick installation guide, you also get two low profile brackets for a single slot installation.
Here are all of our test cards. (Clockwise from bottom right: HIS HD 6450 1GB DDR3, AMD HD 6450 512MB GDDR5, HD 6570, HD 6670; all Galaxy, GTS 450, GT 430, GT 220 and GT 520.)
Before we begin our evaluation, let’s sum up what Galaxy offers us with their GT 520.
- Galaxy proprietary design nearly silent fan cooler
- Two year warranty and a toll-free telephone number
Galaxy includes their Xtreme Tuner HD overclocking software on the driver CD or as a download on their site. Best of all, with their 24 hour manned telephone support, Galaxy offers great service!
About Galaxy
Galaxy, established in 1994, is a Nvidia Add-in-Board (AIB) partner which manufactures products from the low-end GeForce 7200 series to the high-end GTX 500 series. They manufacture products based on Nvidia’s reference design as well as using their own in-house production facilities to manufacture graphic cards based on their own designs using high-end coolers from Arctic Cooling and others.
Galaxy has shipped to the US for a long time as they built video cards for many of the tier 1 brands in the market today. They realized they could create a brand for themselves and save the end customer the middleman fees. Two years ago they launched Galaxy in the US and their products are now available at Best Buy, Microcenter, Fry’s, Dell.com, Newegg, TigerDirect and many other sites. They have excellent quality and toll-free tech support with a 2 year transferable no-registration warranty.
As a total package, the new GT 520 looks (and sounds) great! It looks and feels solid for such a small card. Let’s show you the results of our hand’s on test drive, shall we? We will put it to the test in 29 PC games and in three synthetic tests. But first, let’s see if we can overclock our cards.
Overclocking
The overclock on our Galaxy GT 520’s core is excellent – from 810/1620 MHz to 1000/1650MHz! What really surprised us was the overclock with a *passively* cooled HIS HD 6450 – from 625/500MHz to 725/800MHz. The DDR3 reached it’s absolute limit and completed 3DMark11 at 725/900MHz (x2 – DDR3) which gave us some very interesting results when we compared it to the GDDR version underclocked down also to 725/900MHz (450MHz x 4 – GDDR5).
In contrast, the GDDR5 version of the HD 6450 was clocked at 750/1800MHz (x2) and the Catalyst Control Center limited overclocking to 830MHz on the core. We used our Intel Core i7-920 at 3.8 GHz for evaluating all of our video cards with turbo off and there was zero chance of any CPU bottlenecking. Read on to check our test bed and the games we used.
