HD 4550 reviews are in, Daamit!

DAAMIT’s NEW CHALLENGER in the low-end graphics space, the 4550/4350 (basically the same card, but with different RAM types), are being reviewed across the world wide wibble. This chip occupies the “dirt cheap” category of GPUs and is destined to populate HTPCs, business PCs and the likes. It features a 600MHz core with 8 texture units, 4 ROPs and a 800MHz memory clock. Memory if further castrated by the 64-bit bus width.

Despite it’s rather light graphics performance, the HD 4550 is more than apt to playback HD video and for some basic gaming. Another reason to like it is the fact it’s completely passive and it’s low profile, meaning you can shove it into an HTPC quite easily. It’s most direct competitor is Nvidia’s 9400GT, but even that one falls behind the HD 4550. It also crushes the ubiquitous IGP. Wonder if you can do hybrid crossfire on this one? No-one seemed to care, though.

Finally, in no particular order:

PC Games Hardware

Legit Reviews

Hardware Zone

Hot Hardware

Guru 3D

Neoseeker

Hexus.net

Anandtech

AMD Zone

Computer Shopper

In other reviews…

Professional cooling solutions for workstations aren’t really common, but Noctua thinks there’s a market for it. The NH-U12DO is on review at Tweak Town and it’s a brave new Opteron cooler (yes, Opteron), and it’s got a slightly different profile from the usual Opteron cooler. Noctua is taking advantage of a lack of decent coolers in this segment and adds not only cooling power but also silent fans to the equation. If you work in compute-intensive jobs, you know your Workstation is a loud whiner. Noctua has just changed all that. Let’s hope some integrator picks up on this makes this a build-to-order option. Read about the cooler, here.

Soyo, the ex-mobo, ex-case, manufacturer is currently exploring the world of LCDs. They’ve shipped off a 24-inch Soyo Pearl Series to Think Computers and, of course, they had a go at it. The 24-incher has a very strong pricing, says Bob, just $339, making it a really good buy for those not interested in big brands pricing. No HDMI, just VGA and DVI, which might be a bit of a turn-off for many HD fans. No USB hub/ports either. Read on.

NGOHQ has a review of Logitech’s G9 mouse. It’s a 3200dpi mouse, suitable for just about anything, but what makes it special is the special grip they provide to keep it from slipping from your hand. You can also configure 4 individual weights to improve your own handling of the mouse. There’s a caveat, though: you won’t have anymore excuses to be such a crap Crysis player. You can find the review, here.

There’s a new storage device from WD on the bench at Smallsetbuilder. It’s called the Sharespace and it’s a little 4TB box with RAID 5 capabilities. The unit uses WD’s ‘Green’ drives that perform a little worse than the average drive, but still, it’s priced much cheaper than the average NAS system. No backup software, but remote management is there. Give it a look.

Laptop Magazine has a direct face-off between AMD’s Puma and Intel’s Centrino 2 marchitectures. The two mobile marchitectures don’t seem equally matched as Centrino 2 seems to beat the heck out of Puma on a regular basis except on what regards to the IGP. That’s where DAAMIT performs its best. A bit of a one-sided contest, here. µ