HIS Radeon HD 5450

Strengths:

Decent performance for the price. Nice upgrade from onboard video. Low power draw - less than 20 watts, perfect for PC with small pwr supply (mine only 250w) Silent - no fan, just a big heatsink. Cooling doesn't seem to be a problem, so far. Low-profile card incl 3 end brackets, so with some adjustment you can install the same card in a regular tower case, or a small form factor/low profile case. Driver instal was easy, though slow. VGA, DVI, HDMI, so in theory it can run 3 monitors at a time.

Weaknesses:

Installation in small form factor case requires 2 backplate slots if you want to use the VGA port (minor point, but worth noting) Driver installation seemed slow. Performance is not spectacular, but what do you expect for $40? XP installation temporarily disabled my onboard audio, but easy fix, see below.

Summary:

Bought 2 of these, to install in 2 different PC's. Vista install was fine. XP install in an HP dc7800 SFF altered the PC's BIOS to disable the onboard audio. UNEXPECTED!!! The installer should ask permission, or at least warn about this, rather than just quietly doing it. Re-enabling the onboard audio in the BIOS was easy, once I figured out that was what happened. If it wasn't for that problem, I'd give it 5/5 stars.