Sixteen months ago we looked at the Mainstream segment from the Radeon 5000 series. This looked at the low-end segment in that product family, specifically the Radeon HD 5670, HD 5550 and HD 5450. My "final thoughts" in that review was, "If you have any interest in Eyefinity, or game in anything more than a cursory fashion, I would recommend the upgrade to the 5700-series. The one downside of the 5700-series is that it does require a power connection from the PSU. It would be nice to get the 5700-series performance in low-power card. Maybe next generation".
With the Radeon HD 6000 series, we're now in that "next generation", and we can now see if we can get solid 1080p gaming from a card that doesn't require an external power connection.