The graphics card market is almost entirely centered on creating the fastest, high-yield (except in the case of fermi) products possible. Not everyone, however, needs the hottest running, graphics cycle crunching product available. Yet, thanks to the research done to produce those aforementioned high-end enthusiast graphics cards, new technology is made available to simultaneously make more efficient low-end video processing products. Thus, through AMD's 40nm "Evergreen" manufacturing process (known for such monsters as the HD 5970), the ultra efficient HD 5550 video card has been developed. It's a low-profile video card that still manages to pack 320 stream processors, AMD's Unified Video Decoder, Dolby over HDMI, and DirectX 11, with a maximum load of 45 Watts (minuscule compared to the 5970's 300 Watt load). Today, we are going to evaluate VisionTek's branded HD 5550, a video card that differs from the reference board by using 1GB of GDDR2 (instead of GDDR3 or 5). The card does, however, have an actively cooled heatsink, a feature that is removed from many of the other 5550 cards. Read on to discover if VisionTek has the HTPC,
workstation, slimline, and low-budget gaming card that the market deserves!