When ATi launched the RV770 last summer, few could predict the amount of chaos that was brought onto the market.  Even today, the barrage of products and the assault on NVIDIA continues, with the Sapphire Radeon HD 4550.  But today, we look at things from a different perspective.  The 4850, 4870 and the X2 series handle the gaming side of things very well, but the price point of the HD 4550 aims toward a very different market.  While we still look at the gaming capabilities of this card, the testing will be primarily geared for HTPC and HD playback applications.  So sit back, relax, and let ClubOC torture yet another video card for you.

Packaging and Layout

The way the packaging works with most products is, the more expensive the product, the more extensive the packaging.  No exception here, the 4550 comes in a box that is only slightly larger than a typical PC game box.  Of course, what kind of box would it be if there wasn't a scantily clad female on the front? 

The card itself is surprisingly small.  I can't even remember owning a smaller card than this one; the only one that comes to mind is perhaps a really old GeForce 4 MX440.  The card is so small, that the secondary VGA connection is attached to the PCB via a ribbon cable.  The cooling of the core is done by a very quiet 40mm fan.

The backside of the card isn't terribly exciting, as all it has to reveal to us is the other two DDR3 chips. 

Speaking of the DDR3, it appears the memory on this card are provided by Samsung.  These are rated for 800MHz bus speed and 1600MHz data speed.