Sapphire HD 4550 512MB Review

ajmatson - January 13, 2009
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Testing:

To put the Sapphire HD 4550 to the test I will be running a series of benchmarks designed to stress and push the card to its limits testing how far it can go. I will then be putting the scores up against other cards from a low range to a high range to show you exactly where it sits. All hardware will be run at their stock speeds, timings, and voltages so that there are no interferences that might effect the outcome of the scores.

Processor: Intel Core2 Quad Q9450
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6
Memory: Mushkin XP2 Redline 8000 2 x 2GB 5-5-5-12
Video Card: Sapphire HD 4550
Power Supply: Mushkin 800w Modular Power Supply
Hard Drive: Seagate 750GB SATA
Optical Drive: LG DVD-RW
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate

Comparison Video Cards:

Overclocking:

Overclocked Settings:

Sapphire HD 4550 650/850MHz

Overclocking the Sapphire HD 4550 has been a test in itself. I opened up the Catalyst Control Center and noticed the speeds were capped at 650 for the GPU and 850 for the memory. I thought that can't be all so I started to use ATI Tool and RivaTuner to try to get past that barrier. Boy was that a mistake. Anything above those caps resulted in the screen either losing video all together or multi-colored artifacts that flood the screen. I was not expecting that at all. I went back to the CCC and maxed out the speeds for each and it passed just fine. Since I could not break the barrier the overclocked numbers will be run at 650MHz on the GPU and 850MHz on the memory