Sapphire Radeon HD4550 Evaluation

Sapphire Technology (from this point forward called Sapphire) is a company with a reputation for making high quality ATi (AMD) based products, from their Toxic line of enthusiast cards to their mainboards and multimedia devices. While we have not had much to do with them, we have reviewed one of their products in the past. We found it to be good quality but under powered for the market it was aimed at.
Today, making its second debut on Planetx64.com we see a new product from Sapphire. As with last time, this is an entry level card the HD4550. Will we have a similar experience as last time? Or will this new card, based on ATi’s significantly improved GPU, wow us like the last one did not.

Product: Sapphire HD 4550  
Author: Sean Kalinich
Reviewed on: October 10th 2008
Product cost: $59.99 (at Newegg.com)
Manufacturer: Sapphire Technologies
Spelling and Grammatical editor: Planetx64 Staff

{mospagebreak title=Packaging and Accessories}
Packaging and Accessories:
The Sapphire HD4550 came in a rather small box, but was still well laid out with information and had the obligatory illustration of a hot female, this one bearing a startling resemblance to Sarah Connor from Terminator 2…
The one thing that struck me as odd was the “Prepare to Dominate” tag on the front of the box.
Now correct me if I am wrong but the 4550 is a mid-range entry level (confusing huh?) GPU. It is not really meant to dominate anything but its price range. But hey I guess you have to have something to catch the consumer’s eye. Speaking of catching the eye, one item that will draw notice is the 7.1 sound through HDMI that this card offers as well as the HDMI and Crossfire X Support.

Opening up the box I found a decent cache of goodies including both a DVI-A to VGA and a DVI-D to HDMI adapter. There was also Video out cable and an S-Video to component converter. There is also a half-height tang that, if you remove the VGA port) will allow you to install the Sapphire HD4550 into a 2U sized HTPC case.
A Driver CD and Instruction booklet were also thrown in.
The Driver CD is important as (as of this writing) the available drivers from ATi’s website do not support the 4550.

{mospagebreak title=Specifications and Features}
Specifications and Features:
Taken straight from Sapphire’s website the HD 4550 has the following specifications:
I/O Output: VGA+DL-DVI-I+HDTV
Core Clock: 600 MHz & 80 Stream Processors
Memory Clock: 900MHz, 1800 Mbps.
PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
512MB /64bit DDR3 memory interface
Single Slot Active Cooler
HDMI compliant via dongle
7.1 Audio Channel Support
Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
Shader Model 4.1 support

Now on paper this looks good but, as I and others have found, in practice many of these items just do not pan out.

As a low cost card the HD4550 it not loaded up with a ton of extras but does have a good range of them.
The following are also taken from the Sapphire site.
Upscale Beyond 1080p
Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution and beyond.1

Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2)
UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experience™ for the most processing- intensive content. Take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture capabilities.

Enhanced DVD Upscaling
Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling.2 The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.

HDMI
Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of color when connected to a capable HDTV.

Consumes less than 25 watts under full load
The ATI Radeon™ HD 4550 graphics card consumes less than 25 watts under full load, making it the ideal choice for implementation across a large diverse install base of desktop PCs.

Dynamic Power Management
ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics card features ATI PowerPlay™ technology, delivering high performance when needed and conserving power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.1

Energy Efficient Manufacturing Process
Second generation 55nm chip uses the industry’s most energy efficient manufacturing process.

Stability & Reliability
AMD’s award-winning ATI Catalyst™ graphics software and drivers deliver unprecedented graphics stability and reliability.

The HD4550 also supports Crossfire (as mentioned above) the one thing that sticks out is that there are no interconnects, but that is not a deterrent, it is simply that the HD4550 does not need any to run Crossfire. You can pair up these cards and still get the Crossfire boost from them.

Again things are looking good considering this cards price and market point.

{mospagebreak title=Performance I}
Performance:
When I first planned my testing of the HD4550 I was going to use an entry level system similar to what I thought this card might find its way into. However part of the way through I began to think that I might be selling the card short by doing that. Instead I setup a system that would not hinder the HD4550. So what you should see if the full potential of the GPU, that having been said if you place this in a lower powered system your results might not match what you see here but they should not be far off.
I used an HD3850 not as a direct comparison but as a baseline comparison. The HD3850 represents last generation’s mid-range GPU, by using this we can see how close the new entry level comes to that mid range performance level.

Test System
Intel QX9770
Asus P5E64 WS Evolution
Sapphire HD 4550 512MB
Asus EAH3850 Smart OC (used for base line comparison)
2GB (2x1GB) Kingston DDR 1600 6-6-6-18
Western Digital RaptorX 150GB HDD
Plextor PATA BluRay Drive
CoolerMaster 850Watt PSU (RS-850-EMBA)
Microsoft Windows Vista x64 Ultimate
Cyerlink PowerDVD 8 Ultimate (BluRay Playback)
Catalyst Control Center and Drivers used for the Asus HD3850 Drivers from the CD-Rom used for the HD4550.

BluRay and HD playback:
To kick things off I threw in a few BluRay movies and watched them through both DVI-D and HDMI.
I was not overly surprised by the outstanding playback quality of my BluRay Movies and the reproduction of my HD-TV signal (Over the Air HD).

Gaming:
Now as an entry level card most people would not expect any kind of noteworthy gaming performance from the HD4550. But I still wanted to see how it would handle gaming including DX10 games.

3DMark Vantage:
Of course I would throw in the 3DMark Vantage numbers as it is just about the only DX10 gaming synthetic benchmark available.

3DMark Vantage 4550	3DMarkVantage 3850

The numbers here are not very reassuring and are less than ½ what the 3850 was able to achieve.

Assassin’s Creed (DX10)
For our first test of the HD4550’s ability to game we have a DX10 title up on the block.

Assassin’s Creed DX10 3850	Assassin’s Creed DX10 4550

	Minimum	Maximum	Average
EAH3850 SmartOC	21	42	28.202
Sapphire HD4550	17	28	22.359

To achieve an average frame rate of 28 FPS on the 3850 I could run at 1920×1200 with good image quality settings, to achieve a barely playable game with the HD4550 I had to back the settings down quite a bit. Resolution was down to 1440×900, Level of detail and Graphic Quality dropped 2, and post processing was turned off. Even with this reduction we only managed to maintain 22 FPS, but the game only felt sluggish in a few spots. 1440×900 did not look good on the 24” monitor I was using for testing but on a 22” or 19” it would look pretty good. Assassin’s Creed gets a playable rating for the HD4550.

BioShock:
Another DX10 game, Bioshock is not incredibly hard on a system but it does need some power to run properly.

Bioshock 3850	Bioshock 4550

	Minimum	Maximum	Average
EAH3850 SmartOC	27	86	47.103
Sapphire HD4550	13	48	25.503

Again as you can see I had to reduce the resolution down to 1440×900 for the HD4550 to maintain a base playability level. If you have a smaller LCD panel this resolution will look very good so Bioshock is a title that will work on the HD4550.

Mercenaries 2 World on Fire:
What an awful game, I decided to pick this one up for testing as it looked like it might have some decent graphics, but even at max settings things looked bad. (Overdone bloom effects are my favorite).

Mercenaries 2 3850	Mercenaries 2 4550

	Minimum	Maximum	Average
EAH3850 SmartOC	22	44	29.85
Sapphire HD4550	12	25	17.248

No matter the terrible quality the HD4550 had to be drastically reduced to achieve a playable frame rate. Image quality suffered quite a bit so I do not think you would be happy playing this game on the HD4550

{mospagebreak title=Performance II}
Crysis Warhead:
I am pretty sure you were not expecting to see this one included in a review of an entry level GPU. Well I threw it in considering the DX10.1 support from the HD4550 just to see what we would get.

Crysis Warhead 3850	Crysis Warhead 4550

	Minimum	Maximum	Average
EAH3850 SmartOC	11	51	35.397
Sapphire HD4550	11	47	30.888

I was surprised. I could get a fairly high resolution (1280×800) with low (minimum) image quality setting all with very playable frame rates. By comparison the 3850 could not handle the mainstream settings even at 1027×768 very well. Switching to minimum IQ settings I was able to push up to 1440×900 and maintain playable levels on the 3850. Even Crysis Warhead gets a playable rating on the HD4550.

Portal:
Portal is based off of Valves well written engine and as such can be run at high resolutions without the need for top of the line GPUs.

Portal 3850	Portal 4550

	Minimum	Maximum	Average
EAH3850 SmartOC	0	50	34.431
Sapphire HD4550	0	53	29.405

As you can see I was able to play Portal at up to 1680×1050 with 2x MSAA, the game was smooth and image quality was good, but this is in contrast to 1920×1200 with 2x MSAA on the HD 3850. Portal is another title in the Playable column for the HD4550.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare:
A great action game Call of Duty Modern Warfare features good character models as well as great textures.

Call of Duty 4 3850	Call of Duty 4 4550

	Minimum	Maximum	Average
EAH3850 SmartOC	31	64	45.558
Sapphire HD4550	25	53	34.382

The HD4550 struggled a bit here, although I was able to achieve playable frame rates at 1680×1050 this came at the cost of no AA, raged lines were very visible.  AA in Call of Duty was not available to the HD4550 until I reached 1024×768; at this resolution the image quality was so poor that I could not see anyone running the game at that setting. Call of Duty Modern Warfare was marginally playable on the HD4550 but only due to image quality due to the lack of AA.

Spore:
Spore is a fairly new game and one that is very popular. I can see Spore being played on entry level systems as more and more mainstream and entry level users are sucked into its addictive world.

Spore 3850	Spore 4550

	Minimum	Maximum	Average
EAH3850 SmartOC	20	32	27.777
Sapphire HD4550	14	30	24.126

I was very surprised at how much of an impact Spore had on my hardware. The 3850 was barely able to keep up at 1920×1200 (of course most Spore gaming will be done at much lower resolutions.) For the HD4550 I was able to hit 24 FPS with a resolution of 1440×900 but found the game to be very playable at that setting. I imagine that you could run it at 1280×1024 and have frame rates of 30+.

So it looks like Spore will also be added to the playable column for the HD4550.

{mospagebreak title=Value}
Value:
The Sapphire Radeon HD4550 will only make a small dent in your wallet, coming in at a very reasonable $59.99. This is a very nice cost considering the features and performance I was able to get out of it.
Even if you are only looking to drop this into an HTPC you are going to get your money’s worth from it.

Sapphire offers a 2 year warranty on its Graphics cards. You will have to deal with the place you bought the card for all RMA service the warranty is not transferable and will require proof of purchase (from the place you bought it)

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
The Sapphire HD4550 is not a gamers card; if you are looking to run high resolution games or push a 30” monitor at max res you are looking in the wrong place. The HD4550 is a great entry level card. I was surprise that only one game was not playable out of the ones that I chose, I was expecting terrible gaming performance and poor image quality but that was not the case.  HTPC performance was great with no image quality or performance issues from BluRay or HD playback. You also get great flexibility, with the low cost you could pick up multiple cards and run them in Crossfire or you could conceivably drop this card into an ATi 780G or 780GX board run hybrid Crossfire without breaking the bank. While you won’t be floored by the speed and power of the HD4550 it is a great and cost effective card that would fit perfectly in an HTPC or entry level gaming system.

The Sapphire HD4550 gets our "HTPC Recommended Hardware" stamp of approval

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