SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 256MB REVIEW

• HOME • CPU • PERFORMANCE DATABASE • DIGITAL CAMERA • LINKS • MOTHERBOARD • SITEMAP • VIDEO CARD •

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 256MB REVIEW

"The Sapphire Radeon x550 is a 256MB video card using the latest PCI Express standard, it has been designed to offer good performance for a budget price. The Sapphire Radeon x550 will be reviewed against the Inno3D Geforce 6200 TurboCache using 3dmark 2001 SE - 3dmark 2006 and Rightmark."

ENHANCED THE WAY YOU PLAY - Ignite your imagination with the technology that makes distant worlds erupt with vibrant textures rendered in High-Definition clarity a reality. The Sapphire RADEON™ X550 with the awesome power of two programmable vertex shader pipelines and four extreme parallel pixel pipelines, accelerates next generation DirectX 9 games while remaining best in its price vs. performance class. Support for the latest Smartshader™ 2.0, and Smoothvision™ 2.1 boost the level of realism provided by the X550 to new heights and the available onboard memory of 128MB or 64MB ensures a smooth framrate!

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 FEATURES

Hyper Z™ III
VideoShader™
2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering (AF) modes
2x/4x/6x Anti-Aliasing (AA) modes

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 SPECIFICATIONS

128-bit memory interface supporting 256MB DDR1 memory configuration
Two programmable vertex shader pipelines
PCI Express® x16 lane native support
Full Microsoft® DirectX® 9 support
Dual integrated 10 bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 / HDMI compliant and HDCP ready)
Maximum 3D Resolutions 16.7M colors 2048x1536 85Hz
FullStream™ video de-blocking technology for Real, DivX, and WMV9 formats
Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite

CHIP	GPU	CORE CLOCK MHZ	MEMORY CLOCK MHZ	MEMORY INTERFACE	PIXELS PER CLOCK	DIRECTX
SAPPHIRE RADEON X550	RV370	400	500	128	4	9.0
INNO3D GEFORCE 6200 TC	NV44	350	500	64	4	9.0C
CHIP	GPU	CORE CLOCK MHZ	MEMORY CLOCK MHZ	MEMORY INTERFACE	PIXELS PER CLOCK	DIRECTX

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON64 3000
VIDEO CARD	SAPPHIRE RADEON X550
	INNO3D GEFORCE 6200 TC
ATI DRIVER	ATI CATALYST v6.6
NVIDIA DRIVER	NVIDIA FORCEWARE v91.31
MOTHERBOARD	ASROCK 939 DUAL SATA 2 (BIOS v2.20)
MEMORY	2 x 512MB OCZ GOLD XTC PC3200 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2
DIRECTX VERSION	v9.0C

BENCHMARK SETTINGS:- We use two different image quality and resolution settings when we benchmark computer hardware for review. Low quality setting uses a resolution of 1024x768 (unless otherwise stated) and all of the game settings are set to low, this setting will mostly test for processor rather than video performance. Medium quality setting uses a resolution of 1280x1024 (unless otherwise stated) and all of the game settings are set to medium, this setting will test both the processor and video performance.

3DMARK BENCHMARKS

3DMARK 2001 SE

	11979
	8247

3DMARK 2003

	3428
	2245

3DMARK 2005

	1699
	801

3DMARK 2006

	483
	245

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 INNO3D GEFORCE 6200 TC

COMMENT - "The Sapphire Radeon x550 outperforms the Inno3D Geforce 6200 TC by 32% with 3dmark 2001 SE, 35% with 3dmark 2003, 53% with 3dmark 2005 and finally by 50% with 3dmark 2006. These results might not sound very impressive for most video cards but for budget video cards the Sapphire Radeon x550's performance is excellent."

RIGHTMARK

PIXEL SHADING (PS1.1)

	436
	271

PIXEL SHADING (PS2.0)

	128
	92

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 INNO3D GEFORCE 6200 TURBOCACHE

COMMENT - "The Sapphire Radeon x550 shows it's PS1.1 performance by out performing the Inno3D Geforce 6200 TC by 38%. Although the performance difference narrows with the PS2.0 benchmark the Sapphire Radeon x550 still outperforms the Inno3D Geforce 6200 TC by 29%."

HOME