Sapphire Hybrid Radeon X550

Sapphire Hybrid Radeon video cards are very interesting examples of the ATI reference design implementation. Let us review the Sapphire Radeon X550, which inherits all pleasant features, developed by Sapphire.

The video card pack contains the card, adapters DVI/15-pin D-Sub and S-Video/RCA. There is a CD with drivers, utilities and Sapphire utility Redline, user's manual and PowerDVD5 with the games Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.

Sapphire Hybrid Radeon cards are made of blue textolite. The design of PCB differs from the R423 based cards in the absence of a socket for an additional power supply. Traditionally all Sapphire products have an excellent design. All solutions are performed with the highest quality. The cards of Toxic series are supplied with a rather efficient and low-noise cooling system.

A cooling system is not very complicated, but it has a high quality. The system contains a copper plate and heat distributing edges of the radiator on the GPU. There are also aluminum radiators on the memory chips at the back side of the card. The GPU radiator possesses three small foam-rubber washers for preventing damaging small elements.

The Sapphire Hybrid Radeon card is provided with the 256 MB GDDR-3 memory. The memory bus is 256Bit width and it is implemented with eight micro-chips by Samsung. The chips are executed for BGA form-factors. The access time is 2 ns, responding to the working clock 500 MHz (1000 MHz DDR).

The Sapphire Hybrid Radeon uses graphical processors R430. The specifications of ATI declare that they work with the clock 400MHz and the chips are provided with a protection border.

The Sapphire Hybrid Radeon X550 has a remarkable cooling system by the Arctic Cooling company. The advantages of this system received a high evaluation by the HIS company. The companies Galaxy and Sapphire modified this cooling system, which is known by the low noise level and bright design.

Sapphire video cards demonstrate good results in testing, though these cards loose in Doom3, but they show good results in Half-Life2 and Far Cry. Hybrid video cards have good abilities for overclocking. A tested version of the card achieved 450/1140 MHz that is a very good result.

You could prefer to obtain an alternative solution - nVidia GeForce 6800GT PCI-Express. Nevertheless, this video card possesses a low edition and you can be in trouble to find it in computer shops. The price for this model is higher. At the same time, the chip, used for the Hybrid Radeon X550, is performed by the 0.11 mkm technological processors. This chipset has a decreased level of the heat emission, comparing to the 6800GT.

These video cards can be the greatest choice for gamers. The adapters support popular APIs OpenGL and Direct3D. They guarantee a high quality of rendering for the 3D and 2D applications. The compatibility with the interfaces D-Sub and S-Video makes these products compatible with any model of modern LCD displays. In addition, the price policy of Sapphire is very pleasant. You should look at Sapphire cards attentively if you do not want to waste your money for redundant features and obtain a high quality product.