Final thoughts and rating
Sapphire's Radeon HD 4550 512MB generally mirrors the reference card in most respects, providing feature-rich multimedia provision that, at £45 for a retail card, is compromised by gaming performance that is no better than a previous-generation card costing a touch less. Exacerbating matters, it's hard to find plentiful stock of it six weeks after supposed launch.We appreciate that the low-end of the market is hugely sensitive to price, but the Radeon HD 4670, costing £20 more, is a fundamentally better gaming card, providing up to 3x the HD 4550's performance.
Ultimately, knowing that the HD 4550 is more geared towards multimedia usage than 3D framerate, we would like to see the half-height passive model equipped with native HDMI - perfect for the HTPC market. As it is, this card straddles the desktop and HTPC markets and doesn't do either particularly well.
NVIDIA, too, finds itself in this dilemma with a host of GeForce 9400 GT cards that aren't much cop at gaming but few that ship with the complete multimedia gubbins including in the box.
The current dollar-to-pound exchange rate means that most retail cards' UK pricing has risen since the summer, and this applies to all new stock purchased recently. Gamers should spend the extra £15/£20 and buy a Radeon HD 4650/70 or pre-overclocked GeForce 9500 GT and those on a budget would do well to look towards the cheaper Radeon HD 4350.
The good
Decent multimedia performance and low-ish power-drawHDMI dongle included in the retail package
Very quiet
The not so good
3D performance isn't great, no helped by the underlying architectureDifficult to find in plentiful stock
Better gaming performance can be had for an extra £15/£20
HD 4350 would make for a better multimedia card - costing less
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
HEXUS Where2Buy
The card can be purchased for around here.
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