SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 256MB REVIEW

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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 TC using Far Cry, GT Legends, Lego Star Wars and Quake 3."

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 framerate!

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

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.

FAR CRY

LOW QUALITY

	136
	83

MEDIUM QUALITY

	39
	23

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 INNO3D GEFORCE 6200 TURBOCACHE

COMMENT - "Game benchmarks are always the most important and most interesting benchmarks. The Sapphire Radeon x550 outperforms the Inno3D Geforce 6200 TC by between 39% to 42% and is playable at all quality settings."

GT LEGENDS

LOW QUALITY

	39
	20

MEDIUM QUALITY

	24
	14

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 INNO3D GEFORCE 6200 TURBOCACHE

COMMENT - "The Inno3D Geforce 6200 TC is unplayable when running GT Legends at all quality setting. The Sapphire Radeon x550 outperforms the Inno3D Geforce 6200 TC by 42% to 49% and is almost playable running medium quality."

LEGO STAR WARS

MEDIUM QUALITY

	112
	95

HIGH QUALITY

	112
	64

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 INNO3D GEFORCE 6200 TURBOCACHE

COMMENT - "Lego Star Wars is very playable with both the Sapphire Radeon x550 and Inno3D Geforce 6200 TC. Unlike the Inno3D Geforce 6200 TC the Sapphire Radeon x550 can be played using medium or high quality settings without any reduction in performance."

QUAKE 3 ARENA

1024x768

	264
	202

1280x1024

	179
	128

SAPPHIRE RADEON X550 INNO3D GEFORCE 6200 TURBOCACHE