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A silent Sapphire graphics card tips up
HONG KONG BASED Sapphire Technology has released a silent ATI Radeon HD5500 graphics card.
The snappily named Sapphire HD 5500 Ultimate uses a "heatpipe based wrap-over heatsink" to cool itself. Since it has no fan, the graphics system is "totally silent and maintenance free", according to the company.
Other than that, it is equipped with 1GB of DDR2 memory, with quoted clock speeds of 550MHz core and 800MHz effective for the memory.
Sapphire said that the graphics card has a low power draw with no external power connection needed. This should make it ideal for system upgrades or mainstream PCs that don't have a high end power supply.
It has 320 stream processors, supports Microsoft DirectX 11 and is fully compatible with current DirectX10.1, DirectX 10 and DirectX 9.0 games and applications.
Sapphire claims that the graphics card is particularly ideal for media applications, as it has an onboard hardware Unified Video Decoder that reduces CPU load and enables smoother decoding of Blu-ray and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs as well as Mpeg files.
This particular model has outputs for DVI, HDMI and VGA, and allows HDMI enabled monitors or digital televisions to be directly driven with both video and sound signals over a single HDMI cable. µ
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Which brand of HD5450 did you try out? I have an HD5450 in my system now (Visiontek HD5450 512 MB GDDR3) which, like the HD5550, is completely silent and uses no external power. It includes DVI, VGA, and HDMI-out (including audio over HDMI). I connected both DVI and HDMI outputs to the same Acer H233H display (which also supports VGA-in) and both DVI and HDMI worked just fine; however, in a difference from common practice, the HDMI was the primary port, with DVI relegated to secondary. I'm not a paid reviewer and don't work for Incisive Media or any other press org (in fact, I live in the US) - my original comment on the HD5450 can be found on [H]ardOCP's HardForum in the Graphics forum (AMD Flavor subforum) titled "The Surprise that is the Visiontek HD5450".
The lowest-end (Cedar) cards in AMD's DX11 GPU line are *not* designed to be dominating gamer cards (that is, after all, what HD58xx is for); however, throw a mid-level game at them and they do acquit themselves quite decently (Starcraft II at 1440x900 at High, with the only reason I don't crank it to Ultra being no AA for AMD GPUs) and the same applies to the DX11-ready BattleForge. That is all the more surprising considering that Cedar *is* about video playback (HD video playback, to be precise), which it flat-out excels at (given an operating system with 3D GPU support, and the proper codecs, any HD5XXX GPU will never choke on video). A low-end card that does the primary job with aplomb, yet still won't embarrass itself when faced with game code, that is silent, uses but one slot, and costs less than $80 (US)? Where's the fail in that?
PowerColor offers a complete line-up of passive cooled Radeon HD5xxx cards for a while now. It's called the Go! Green line with the fastest being the Radeon HD5750 with all the bells and whistles for just under $180.
If it's the same GPU from 4650, how can It support DX11? Did AMD somehow patched with glue the extra silicon to add the functionality? Do yourself a favor and pay attention to the BS you're writing.
The company specialized in product rebranding is nVidia. ATI product line is all DX11 compliant, so they're all new. Can't say the same about nVidia.
As I posted on Hardware Canucks earlier, this card is nothing but an underclocked Radeon 4650 with a big, passive heatsink.
This 5550 uses the same RV730 GPU as the Radeon 4650. It also uses the same DDR2 memory. The differences here are that the GPU is clocked 50MHz lower and the memory 200MHz lower as compared to the 4650.
Nothing new here, move along people...
From the published pics on other sites, it seems that the heatsink on the back on the card interferes with adjacent cards, so basically it is a single-thickness card that requires double slot installation.
*SighZ* Personally I love the new ATI 5XXX provided they are at least a 5750 or above. For some reason either ATI or the manufacturers are shafting people that desire dual DVI cards + display port for eyefinity. I tried using a 5450 (or something similar) which had DVI/HDMI/VGA but could only get the DVI & VGA working together, whereas my 5770 at home I have 2x DVI monitors & and another monitor connected via DisplayPort - VGA adapter (1920x1200, and 2x 1680x1050). I'm not looking to game with eyefinity but I like the option of having triple monitors as programmer.