We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
Even though the HD6450 has a small fan, it never spins that fast, thanks to a low thermal demand. It reaches full fan speed when gaming, Furmark doesn't cause the fan to spin any faster.
Seems like a very decent card for the money. Not my cup of tea, but for media duties, very nice indeed.
If they clock this to 625mhz it will not relate to these scores unfortunateyl, thats a significant core clock drop.
Not a very exciting product, but the fact you can game on more than one screen, even if the IQ would be rubbish is a very cool idea. Great idea for a second system but I cant see this being used as a gaming card, more for media.
In that area it does very well indeed.
Sales in this market are much larger than the high end but there is very little money to be made here by AMD or their partners, maybe $10 a card profit.
This is a nice update, but passive would be more appealing to me than a fan.
The HD6450 seems like a nice HTPC card, if not a tad expensive.
Also, it’s nice to see a tech review site that actually makes an effort to make sure that their graphs are clear to read, so people can actually quickly make sense of the data (the whole point in a graph). Keep up the good work.
Not a very exciting product, but the fact you can game on more than one screen, even if the IQ would be rubbish is a very cool idea. Great idea for a second system but I cant see this being used as a gaming card, more for media.But the diappionting aspect is it does not have pixel shader version of 5