ATI Radeon HD 4550 Versus EVGA GeForce 9500GT Review :: ATI HD 4550 Card

The first thing that comes to mind with this card at first glance is what a big heatsink it has. Modern video cards have heatsink. The front of the card is almost completely covered with a heatsink. The card itself is about 6 inches long, meaning that the card can fit into most cases without issue as to length inside the case as some cards may have issues with.

Heatsink

Rear of PCB

PCI Express

Head on view

ATI outfits this card with 512MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 800MHz. With a 128-bit memory interface that means the HD 4550 has a memory bandwidth of 12.8GB/second. One consequence of the low power requirements and energy efficiency they built into the HD 4xxx design is that the HD 4550 doesn’t need an external power source beyond the 75W provided by the PCI Express 2.0 slot. In fact, the card requires less than 25W under full load.

IO

Serial Number

The ATI reference card has an interesting array of display ports on the card to enable multiple monitor solutions. A Dual-Link DVI port, an HDMI port and a Display Port round out the expansion options on this card. The interesting thing is the inclusion of both the Display Port and the HDMI port as they are replacing the DVI port in modern computer monitors and you can run another DVI port or even a VGA port with adapters. ATI sent a bare reference card without a bundle of hardware or software.