# AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4550 passive 512M



## W1zzard (Oct 5, 2008)

AMD's new Radeon HD 4550 comes in a passively cooled version without fan. Such a noiseless experience is crucial in media PC designs where you don't want to be distracted by any fan noise. Also included is a native HDMI and DisplayPort output for connection to your big screen. With a price of around $50 the card even offers some potential for casual gaming.

*Show full review*


----------



## to6ko91 (Oct 9, 2008)

Does anybody think that it is wierd to cut part of the PCB specially for the cooling ??
Wouldn't it be better to have the cooling going from one side to the other ?


----------



## Homeless (Oct 9, 2008)

I've been trying to buy one of these forever now


----------



## Poisonsnak (Oct 9, 2008)

to6ko91 said:


> Does anybody think that it is wierd to cut part of the PCB specially for the cooling ??
> Wouldn't it be better to have the cooling going from one side to the other ?



It does look a bit odd but lots of lower end cards have funny shaped PCBs (unrelated to cooling).  Basically the two reasons I can think of are:
1. lower end card has fewer components so you don't need all that space
2. PCB area isn't free and cutting that corner off lowers their manufacturing cost.


----------



## Poisonsnak (Oct 9, 2008)

> ...now 7.1 is supported. But obviously your decoder and speaker setup needs to support that as well on the output side...



So if this card supports 7.1 over HDMI, does that mean once you pick HDMI audio as your default audio device any sound on your computer will go over HDMI as 7.1 LPCM (provided the source is 7.1 of course)?

The reason I ask is I have a 790GX (aka HD 3300) and yes it supports 5.1 over HDMI but it seems to be limited to S/PDIF modes (5.1 dolby digital / DTS, or 2.0 LPCM).  Any general audio source on your system is not going to be DD/DTS so you're basically limited to 2.0 unless you're watching a DVD or something.


----------



## Mussels (Oct 10, 2008)

Poisonsnak said:


> Any general audio source on your system is not going to be DD/DTS so you're basically limited to 2.0 unless you're watching a DVD or something.



Correct.

Thats why Nvidia has a solution where you connect an external soundcard, allowing one of the cards (like my auzentech) with real time encoding.


the HDMI audio feature of ATI cards is *purely* for media purposes. it should not be used for gaming.


----------



## Darkrealms (Oct 16, 2008)

It sure beats Nvidias competition in the price range (9400 GT).  But if your already wasting $50, might as well spend $20 more and get something that will perform quite a bit better.

Thanks W1zz.


----------

