Last week AMD launched their Radeon HD 4550 series which is based on the new RV710 GPU. The GPU is a derivative of the RV770 and includes all of its features with a reduced shader and raster operating units count. The cards are targeted at the entry level segment with focus on high definition media playback. AMD has designed two reference boards. The one we have today features a passive cooler which makes it a great choice for a media PC because silence is key there. Also included is a native HDMI and DisplayPort output and as such underlines the home theatre PC positioning of this card. In case you are looking for a low profile card, it will fit into the tiny low profile cases. - techPowerUp

AMD Radeon HD 4550 512MB Passive Cooler Review

We received just the card from AMD, without package or any accessories. Retail cards will of course include the appropriate accessories like manual, driver CD and adapter cables. The Radeon HD 4550 is dominated by the big black passive heatsink, it also uses a single slot which is often crucial in media PC designs. The card has one DVI port, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort. This is certainly an interesting output configuration and one of the first reference design cards that uses a native DisplayPort connector. In case you still use an analog display you can of course use a DVI adapter to connect your monitor.

The heatsink is a really simple piece of metal covered by fins to increase the surface area. Despite its basic design the heatsink does a great job at keeping the card cool. All RV710 based cards support CrossFire without a dongle. Data exchange between the two cards happens via the PCI Express bus. An external power connector is not needed. The video card will draw all its power from the PCI Express bus. The GDDR3 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry a latency of 1.2ns which mean they should be good for at least 1600MHz. Our final overclocks of this budget card are 705MHz core and 1886MHz memory.

AMD's new Radeon HD 4550 is a great evolutionary step up from the Radeon HD 3450. The performance has greatly increased, yet this is definitely not a gamers card. While you can certainly play most games at modest resolutions with some eye candy, many people have just gotten used to turning up everything to the max to match what they see on marketing screenshots. If you are just looking for something that plays better than your integrated graphics, the Radeon HD 4550 may be for you. On the other hand, for a few extra bucks you can get a Radeon HD 4670 or GeForce 9600 GT which offer much more performance per dollar.

The media playback features have also made a step forward, but there is nothing revolutionary. On previous generation products the decoding was done on the CPU, now it is done in hardware. But since the secondary stream is running at a lower bitrate and resolution it wouldn't tax your CPU that much anyway. If you are building a media PC on the tightest possible budget, the Radeon HD 3450 would still your weapon of choice. Where this card really shines is its completely passive cooling design making it a noiseless experience which is crucial in any home theatre setup, as noise is the most annoying factor in your living room.

And also we would like to mention the extremely low power consumption and overclocking potential of this card. While they are only of secondary concern for you as the end user, they show how well AMD did their job engineering an efficient GPU that runs well without drawing loads of power.