ATI Mobility Radeon 4550

The ATI Mobility Radeon 4550 is a budget notebook graphics card right alongside the Radeon 4350, both cards are specifically designed to provide high definition entertainment support through the use of the high performance Radeon 4500 series GPU and Microsoft DirectX 10 for gaming. AMD claims the Radeon 4500 series GPU units will deliver 3.7 times the performance of their previous GPUs; and will even consume less power, meaning a longer battery life. In order to keep track of power consumption the 4500 series GPU will take advantage of integrated ATI Powerplay technology. The built-in Microsoft DirectX 10 support means the Radeon 4500 series devices will be fully compatible with Windows Vista, and will also support the Aero graphics interface. AMD quotes that users of the Mobility Radeon 4550 will be able to experience full HD quality content, including HD video editing, Blu-ray media, Picture-in-Picture (PIP) media, High definition photos, and users wil also be able play the most popular and demanding 3D games to date. The Radeon 4350 and 4550 GPU devices also include support for 7.1 channel pass through audio to the integrated HDMI port. The ATI Radeon 4550 GPU will include 512MB DDR3 onboard memory an 800 MHz memory clock speed, a 600MHz core clock speed, and a low price of $55; it was announced in January, 2009 and is set for a release sometime close to October later this year.