Sapphire Radeon X550 Review

Although Sapphire may be best known for its high-end ATI video card solutions, the company also offers a variety of entry-level ATI-based graphics cards. I actually took a look at Sapphire's X300SE HyperMemory card back in may. Today, it's time to review a card that is a notch up in the entry-level segment -- the Sapphire Radeon X550. While the X300SE HyperMemory costs around $50, the X550 can be found for about $75.

The X550 is available with both 128MB and 256MB of memory. Additionally, it is a PCI Express card with either a 128-bit or 64-bit memory interface. The X550 I received from Sapphire features 256MB of DDR memory and a 128-bit interface, and it is a silent, heatsink-only card. The fanless design will definitely appeal to any system builder, especially the living room media PC crowd.

Let's get right into the review and see how the silent 256MB X550 compares to the X300SE HyperMemory card and Leadtek's 6200 TurboCache card.

Features

• 64-bit and 128-bit memory interface supporting 64MB or 128MB DDR1 memory configurations
• Four extreme parallel 3D rendering pixel pipelines
• Two programmable vertex shader pipelines
• PCI Express® x16 lane native support
• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 9 support
• SmartShader™ 2.0
• Hyper Z™ III
• VideoShader™
• Dual integrated display controllers
• Dual integrated display controllers
• Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 / HDMI compliant and HDCP ready)
• Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
• ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite

Specifications

• Chip set: X550
• Engine clock: 400MHz
• Memory clock: 500MHz
• Memory interface: 128 bit
• Memory Support: 256 MB
• Bus Interface: PCI - Express
• Variable Display Outputs: VGA + TV out + DVI
• Max 3D resolution: 2048 x 1536 @ 85Hz (VGA); 1024 x 768 (TV out)
• Hardware Features:
  • DirectX® 9
  • SmartShader™ 2.0
  • SmoothVision™ 2.1
  • Fullstream™
• Software Feature: HydravisionTM

ATI's Radeon X550 specs page: http://www.ati.com/products/radeonx550/specs.html.