Sapphire Radeon HD5450 Video Card
First off, if you are a gamer I did not test this with any games. I got it to keep my onboard video card from grabbing RAM from my base memory. That feature seems to work just fine. This is a very good video card for the price. The onboard 1gb off DDR3 memory just astounds me. Keep in mind that my computer roots go back to computers that had 64k of memory, let alone video cards with 1gb of RAM.

I'm giving this five stars because overall, for about $50, it's a pretty good card. My windows experience index is now at 5.1 for "Graphics" and 6.2 for "Gaming Graphics". I have a windows 64 bit machine with 4gigs of RAM and intel core duo 2.13GHz CPU. Overall it has definitely improved visual performance, BUT if you are a gamer you should get something more expensive. I can barely run Saints Row The Third on low graphics setting (this also has to do with how old my CPU is and the amount of RAM I have).
If you are looking for something to help with video streaming and movie playing on a higher resolution screen, this card will run like a champ.
Also if you are interested in AMD's Catalyst Control Center overclocking ability, this card will run more than high enough for very high quality videos, dvds, bluerays and whatever media you want. If you are building a PC to store media and have it connected to your TV, I have been recommended this card for that specific reason... Read more

The card arrived quickly, was no problem to install with the drivers, and the HDMI audio worked instantly. (A problem I had with older cards.) The card isn't even very heavy, like you'd expect with a solid aluminum heatsink. It doesn't even get hot under load, though the framerate obviously leaves a lot to be desired in most games. It's great for video and casual games, awesome for a silent HTPC, and a good emergency stop-gap for heavy games with everything turned off and resolution cranked down.

One major problem I had right from taking it out of the box is that the heatsink wasn't well sealed down at all and consequently wasn't making contact with the chips. It wasn't obviously damaged, but just being knocked around a bit probably did that. GPU temps were high enough to cause artifacts and crashes. I had to remove the heatsink, reapply paste, put the crappy springs back on and pray that it stayed on. None of that would have happened if it was clamped down harder... Read more