DiRT 2 and Mafia II
DiRT 2, a lovely-looking racer and one of the first games to use a DX11 path offers improved visuals whilst burning through the London map.
The Radeon HD 4550 cannot run the DX11 codepath and is therefore omitted from this benchmark.
Gaming-wise, invoking the DX11 path doesn't make much sense on a budget GPU; it's unplayable at 1,280x1,024 with the high-quality settings.
Mafia
II
Mafia II hit the shelves recently and has proved to be a big hit. We use the internal benchmark and dial in medium-quality settings.
Mafia II is smooth-ish at 1,280x1,024, but we'd recommend knocking down the anisotropic filtering for fluid gameplay.
The shortcomings of a £30 graphics card -Radeon HD 4550, akin to next-gen integrated graphics - are clearly demonstrated here.
