The battle of the HTPC cards, Galaxy’s GT 520 vs. HD 6450 (GDDR5 vs. GDDR3)
Conclusion
Price to Performance
The GT 520 generally sits in between both extremes of the HD 6450, and the overclocked version comes close to the GDDR5 version trading blows with it. We also see the GT 520 generally beat its GT 220 predecessor in nearly all of the benchmarks and it is a solid improvement over that also mostly HTPC card. As cards that require no external power besides the PCIe slot, these new Geforce cards are excellent for low power usage.
We note that the GTS 430 stands out as a performance wild card to put up against the two new cards since they are all priced similarly around $60 . Leaving the GT 430 off of our chart would have made a completely different impression of the new GT 520 and HD 6450. The GT 520 does succeed as a good-quality successor to the GT 220 and as an excellent alternative to the HD 6450 although it is totally eclipsed by the GTX 430’s strong price to performance ratio. It makes it impossible for us to recommend any of these new cards based on their suggested price as performance alone does not redeem them with so many other good choices available. However, as low-power cards suited for light gaming, they are excellent choices for HTPC!
Let’s take a look at current suggested and very general USA etail pricing.
- GT 520 – $46-65
- HD 6450 (GDDR5/DDR3)- 50-$65
- HD 6570 – $79
- HD 6670 – $99
- GTS 450 – $80-$100
- GT 430 – $60
We have to wait and see how street pricing affects the new cards before we can make a strong recommendation for them based on performance. And if you are primarily a PC gamer, you will avoid these cards, choosing instead a GTS 450 or a HD 6670.
Did Nvidia succeed with GT 520?
It appears that Nvidia succeeded in doing what they set out to do. They succeeded in beating the GT 420’s performance; something the aging HD 5450 was unable to do . However, it also appears that Nvidia was somewhat troubled by its own GT 430 pricing as well as the new HD 6450 and AMD’s willingness to discount their GDDR5 version as a generally stronger performing card. If these cards did not exist, we would have no trouble recommending the Galaxy GT 520. However, they do exist and they make it hard to recommend less powerful and similarly-priced new cards unless you have extraordinarily low-power requirements and a need for DX11 features.
It is pretty clear from our 28 games and three synthetic tests that the Galaxy GT 520 is a quality entry-level video card. The new Galaxy GT 520’s success will depend on market pricing and also what Nvidia does with the rest of their GeForce pricing and how AMD responds with HD 6450 pricing. Basically, the GT 520 is an improvement in every way over the GT 420 series that it replaces and much stronger than the HIS HD 6450-DDR3 video card.
The GT 520
Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- The GT 520 is faster than its predecessor, the GT 220.
- The stock Galaxy GT 520 is much faster than the HIS HD 6450-DDR3 version
- Low power usage!
- There is further room for overclocking and good scalability.
- New architecture brings support for GPU computing and a level of performance way beyond the last generation.
- DX11 and greatly improved support for tessellation, 1 GB vRAM and a good clockspeed brings more performance over the older series
Cons:
- It is expensive at $60 – same as the HD 5450 GDDR5 version or the GT 430, both of which are faster; the market will ultimately decide the pricing
The competition is hot as the prices on even the new video cards have softened and AMD offers their own set of features including Eyefinity. Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT. Stay tuned for a further evaluation of HD 6990 versus GTX 590 at 5760×1080 and 2560×1600 and also an evaluation of 3D Vision/Surround and HD3D. We also have a Facebook contest sponsored by Galaxy starting in a few days with Great Prizes! Stay tuned.
Mark Poppin
ABT Senior Editor
Please join us in our Forums
Become a Fan on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
For the latest updates from ABT, please join our RSS News Feed
Join our Distributed Computing teams
- Folding@Home – Team AlienBabelTech – 164304
- SETI@Home – Team AlienBabelTech – 138705
- World Community Grid – Team AlienBabelTech
