Radeon 5450 Memory clock lower than specified

[guinness1983]

I just bought a Radeon 5450 512 ddr3, 650mhz core clock, 800mhz memory clock(1600effective).

I installed it and checked with catalyst and GPU-Z, all specs match except for the Memory Clock which is rated at 667mhz.

Is there something I'm missing here? I am running a dell e521 dual core 3800 2gb ram.

Also, on a slightly related note, I noticed on the box it said 400watt or more. As far as I know my dell psu is 305watts but everything seems fine at the moment apart from the memory clock spec not matching.

 

[Peter.Cort]

try running a game and see if it picks up, sometimes cards will downclock when idling. and I would look into upgrading the power supply, the 5450 isn't a power hungry card, but 305w isn't a whole lot of power either. with that setup I don't really forsee much of an issue, if it starts to run abnormally slow or crash (more frequently than it might be already) especially under load then definitely get a new PSU because that's a sign that it's not pumping out enough power to run all your components and that can lead to a blown PSU and I rarely see a situation where a blown PSU doesn't take some other components with it, usually the motherboard and/or cpu. which would not be fun on your wallet to replace.

Another thing to consider is Dell doesn't use the most efficient PSU's (same can be said about all prebuilt pc manufacturers, not singling out dell) and they usually give the system just what it needs for power, and assumes that you're not going to upgrade any parts so there isn't a lot of room for overhead.

 

[guinness1983]

THanks. Turns out the 800mhz specified in the shop was for the ddr2 model (400mhz - 800 effective mhz), this one actually has 1334, hence the 667mhz. It was all in chinese which added to the confusion. One thing I don't quite understand is how all the reviews rated the 512 ddr3 as having 800mhz memory clock...

I did go into ATI overdrive on catalyst and noticed there was this slider set at 667mhz as standard with the option to go all the way to 900mhz. A bit confusing...

As for the power, I been looking around for alternatives, I saw on the Dell website a computer that interested me and realized it had the same card with a 250 watt power supply. So if Dell are selling a pc with this card running on a 250 watt psu, the 400 minimum must not be a necessity?

 

[Peter.Cort]

overdrive allows you to overclock the card. and it's not necessary per say to have a 400w psu to run that card, because it's pretty low powered as far as GPU's go, and it's not meant to be a gaming card, and also the 3800 you have isn't a power hungry cpu, I've run the 4000x2 which is the step up from yours with overclocked heavily with onboard graphics 4gb ram and a lot of hard drives and didn't see close to 400w usage under 100% load.

the thing with wattage though is it's not the end all be all for powering your system, the cpu and gpu use the 12v rail, optical and hard drives and most fans use the 5v rail, and different companies disperse the power throughout rails differently, more commonly cheaper PSU's will have more power dedicated to the 5v rail instead of the 12v rail, and so if you have a 500w psu with the majority of the power going to the 5v rail it won't be as effective in powering high powered devices as a same wattage PSU that has more power dedicated on the 12v rail. Also efficiency comes into play here, because under 100% load a 305w psu that comes from dell won't be 100% efficient, which means it's not putting out 305 watts, the exact amount is variable on a lot of conditions, but if your devices use close to the 305w amount (which is doubtful in your case) then when you play a game or run a very cpu/gpu intensive task you're putting a lot of stress on your components.

What all do you use your computer for? If you game at all I'd recommend getting a 500w or 600w PSU just because it will allow for upgrades without having to go out and buy another PSU if you go with the minimum recommended 400w PSU. If you don't game and just use the computer for basic every day tasks then a good quality 400w psu would be good.

PSU's are also pretty cheap, under $70 for a very high quality 500w-600w psu, and around $50 for a nice 400w psu.

 

[guinness1983]

Thanks. I can't imagine something that runs lower than my old nvidia 8400gs would require more wattage to run.

I haven't played a game other than solitaire or chess titans in over three years on my pc. I generally use it for browsing, doing research on stuff like this, watching live streaming sports and looking at car/photography websites.

The most load I put on it is when I have multiple tabs like when I open photography sites and keep pictures open in several tabs or when I watch multiple live streaming sites at the same time I start to hear my pc getting a bit louder and sometimes it slows down momentarily. I don't know if any of that has to do with the graphics or the actual cpu itself but tha'ts about it.

Edit: I also charge my mp3 player of the usb and have an external hard drive connected permanently via usb as well.

Another thing I just noticed in the reviews for the product is that idle temp is around 30 Celsius, mine idles at 58 in similar conditions. Could that be an indication of underpowering?