Introduction

I would like to thank Diamond Multimedia for supplying the review sample.

Diamond Multimedia has been making video cards, sound cards and modems for 20 yrs. It was a Diamond Monster 3D card that was my first 3D graphics card purchase, it was even capable of dual video card graphics using a 3dFX chipset and similar to today’s Crossfire using a single cable from one card to the other. That was sometime ago and video cards have come a long way and in some aspects full circle. Diamond Multimedia makes ATI graphic cards from the X1800 down to the newly added Stealth Express X550.

ATI introduced the X550 as an option for low budget PCI-Express systems falling between the X300 and X600 Pro. The Diamond Stealth Express X550 is using the same GPU core as the X300(RV370) but 75 MHz higher clock at 400 MHz with Infineon DDR2 memory at 500 MHz which is 100 MHz higher than the X300 using DDR1. The core and memory MHz along with memory type (DDR1 vs. DDR2) / amount (128 MB vs. 256 MB) being the difference between them with the same amount of Pixel Pipes at 4 and each with Vertex Shader at 2.
So with those specs this budget card would work best for Multimedia systems and or those just wanting to increase their video capability from their onboard graphics to an entry level one. With the Diamond Stealth Express X550 in hand let's take a look at what you can expect.

Featuring:

• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 9 support
• SmartShader™ 2.0
• SmoothVision™ 2.1
• With: DVI/TV-Out
• Hyper Z™ III
• VideoShader™
• Dual integrated display controllers
• Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution

Specifications:

• ATI Radeon® X550(RV370)
• Memory: 256MB DDR 2
• GPU Core Clock: 400 MHz
• Memory Clock: 250 MHz
• Four extreme parallel 3D rendering pixel pipelines
• Two programmable vertex shader pipelines
• 128-bit memory interface
• PCI Express® x16 lane native support

Infineon DDR2 HYB18T256161AF-28= DataSheet

From the Datasheet one can see that the DDR2 is spec'd to run at 700MHz 2.8ns

Source Infineon

Radeon RV370 GPU Thermal Specs