Sapphire Radeon HD 5550 Ultimate

[Rob Williams]

This past February, AMD quietly launched the Radeon HD 5550 alongside the much more touted HD 5570. At about $10 less than that card, the HD 5550 is an unusual breed. To help put all of the pieces together, Sapphire sent us its "Ultimate" edition of the card, which uses reference clock speeds, but features a very effective passive cooler.

You can read our full review here and discuss it here!

[Doomsday]

i was about to Rofl when i clicked on the next page button to crysis warhead benchmarking! lol!

[samuelson1]

Hi,

I´d just test my 2 x 4870 in cross fire and get this:

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

Score Performance 15.371
Score Hight 11.256

Less than one 5870 a more than 5850 ??

If I want to improve my system must to go for a 5870 minimun??

Is correct?

Thanks!!

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by samuelson1

If I want to improve my system must to go for a 5870 minimun??

I think this is the wrong thread for a question like this, but that would be the case. Though given your performance as it is, I wouldn't recommend upgrading at all, unless you want to go with something like 2 x HD 5850. Your performance is good as it stands, so there's no sense to purchase a new GPU that increases the performance by about 15 - 20%. If you're willing to spend some cash, you might as well see a real improvement from it.

But again, I just recommend you keep what you have, unless it's DX11 you're after.

[samuelson1]

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

I think this is the wrong thread for a question like this, but that would be the case. Though given your performance as it is, I wouldn't recommend upgrading at all, unless you want to go with something like 2 x HD 5850. Your performance is good as it stands, so there's no sense to purchase a new GPU that increases the performance by about 15 - 20%. If you're willing to spend some cash, you might as well see a real improvement from it.

But again, I just recommend you keep what you have, unless it's DX11 you're after.

Ok many thanks! I´ll keep it like is.

[looisboo]

This card is just too slow

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by looisboo

This card is just too slow

Yes ;-)

I won't lie... benchmarking with cards like these feels like torture :-/

Overpriced, under powered and no place in ATi's line up....

So why did I buy one? Admittedly I didn't get the Sapphire Ultimate version - just the Sapphire low profile card. So what made me do it? - have a look again at the power consumption, a hampster on a dynamo could power this thing and as a replacement for my ATI HD 4550 it is a massive improvement. Given as I have a dell 540s (the slimline one with a miserly 250W PSU) maximum performance from minimum electricity is the order of the day.
Yes I could have got the more powerfull 5570 but I may have needed to upgrade the PSU as well if I'd done that ( a lot more than an extra $10). So whilst ATI may have not made this card specifically for my machine - it's a damn near perfect match.
Computing on a budget is a fine art (maybe I'll start my own blog - Underclockers or something).