ATI Radeon HD 4350 and 4550: Great HTPC Solutions
by Derek Wilson on September 30, 2008 12:45 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
We generally complain endlessly about graphics cards that purport to bring 3D capability to the masses, as they more often than not just bring frustration and dissatisfaction to end users who expect to be able to play the latest games without feeling like they're viewing a bad mosaic or some impressionist paintings. And these cards are not cards for gaming, but each does have its uses when chosen for the strengths of the card.
This hardware is currently where it's at for HTPCs. Both the 4550 and 4350 support 8-channel LPCM over HDMI. For the HTPC user, this makes these cards a great combination audio and video solution that is cheap, flexible, quiet/silent, and fully capable of accelerating video playback and passing high quality audio out to your sound system. Honestly, getting a $40 sound card isn't something some people think twice about, but with the added benefit of video decode acceleration these new parts should be fairly attractive to the HTPC crowd.
While some integrated solutions can offer the above, choice and flexibility are great things to have in a system. Now HTPC builders have the option of a passively cooled 4550 that can meet their audio and video needs, or a low profile 4350 that is very quiet even if it isn't completely silent. Without the need for onboard audio or video (for a strictly HTPC system using HDMI), we could see a lot more interesting options come available to end users looking to hook something up to their television.
Honestly, we wish the 4350 was an integrated part on current motherboards (and we would really prefer to see it passively cooled, but we'll have to wait and see if any manufacturers alter the reference design on this one). While it isn't a card designed for gaming, it is capable of showing gamers what they are missing. The 4350 offers performance that, while lack luster, wouldn't be a horrendous chain on the neck of game developers. Offering settings that enable playable frame rates at 800x600 or 1024x768 at a bare minimum on the 4350 would really raise the bar in some cases and allow developers to focus on making their games look better and play better. End users who wanted to try one of the more hard core games could see if it was for them with out the added headache that the current group of horribly underpowered integrated solutions offer.
As for the 4550, it really isn't enough faster than the 4350 to put it into another class of product in terms of 3D. The larger PCB and passive cooling solution make it a better fit for some specific situations, but if we are making the choice for one of these cards on game performance, at this level its really not going to make a big difference. Both cards kind of suck for any real gaming. If you need a card that can really give you a taste of what PC gaming can be, you still want the option to use it as an HTPC card (with 8 channel LPCM), and you don't care about silence, the 4670 is where its at. It still won't get you all the way to gaming nirvana, but for low resolutions it can offer some satisfaction.
The NVIDIA 9500 GT is priced between the 4550 and the 4670, but it doesn't offer all the features we want to see on an HTPC card. Performance does fall between the 4550 and the 4670, but as these numbers (and the rest of the numbers in our 4670 article show), the 4670 is really in another class. If we are going to recommend that you spend more money on a part to get game performance, our recommendation isn't going to be to spend an extra $15 on an NVIDIA card that only offers a little bit of a boost over something that is already under powered. Our recommendation would be to spend the extra $30 and get the 4670 that offers the capability of playing games with all the options turned on and up at low resolution (well, except for Cyrsis, but not even high end parts can do that).
Anyway, the point is that with cards in this class, you can't expect gaming performance. And even still we have cards that absolutely blow away integrated graphics. This really does highlight just how how horrible the performance of integrated solutions really is in comparison to any modern add-in graphics part. But that doesn't mean these cards don't have some value. Not everyone needs 3D, and these cards are priced very well. And more importantly, these cards offer a real solution to a problem HTPC builders have been faced with for a long time. The Radeon 4350 and 4550 offer quiet or silent video acceleration for full resolution blu-ray playback with the option of enabling 8 channel LPCM audio playback over HDMI. If you want to build an HTPC, one of these cards would be a very good fit.
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Devo2007 - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - link
I see there are three connectors on the 4550 card. One of them is obviously HDMI, the other one is DVI, but what's the third? Could it be a DisplayPort connector or something like that?Wineohe - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - link
I'm of the camp that I would never go this route if I was serious about building an HTPC system. I would frankly not play games anyway on an HTPC system and even with the 4550 game play is marginal. As mentioned by another post the power consumption is terrible. The G45 still seems like the best HTPC solution. If it were more powerful in terms of 3D it would probably be more inefficient also. I guess if you were really stuck with your system board (budget) or you wanted 8 channels (you have an AMD board) then it is a solution.Nil Einne - Thursday, February 5, 2009 - link
Um, the G45 is an UTTER POS even for most HTPC purposes. Post processing options are virtually non existant, it doesn't support PIP IIRC, it doesn't have decent audio over HDMI support either and the drivers have numerous problems (e.g. with 1080p altho perhaps this is fixed). If you want integrated, go the AMD ATI 3200/3300 (780/790) or perhaps the 9300 for IntelNil Einne - Thursday, February 5, 2009 - link
Apologies, was wrong about the audio output. The G45 audio output is fine (actually Intel has had 8 channel LPCM for a long while). But my comments on post processign and particularly driver issues and 1080p support were right, e.g. http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3430&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3430&am...The worst thing is, Nvidia and ATI/AMD are continually improving their drivers in terms important for HTPCs whereas Intel doesn't seem to much
VaultDweller - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - link
OK, so I admit I've always been a bit confused when people start talking about HDMI audio support on video cards.How does the video card actually get the audio from the sound card to output it? From the picture it looks like the 4550 has an HDMI input and output... but doesn't that mean the sound card needs to have HDMI output to pass it to the video card? And aren't there almost no sound cards with HDMI output?
deruberhanyok - Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - link
No, the video card has an audio controller built-in, and you get the HDMI video and audio if you use the built-in HDMI port (or, for Radeon cards that do not have an HDMI port built-in, you get the video and audio if you use the included DVI->HDMI adapter).A sound card is not required. This works for regular audio as well (from games or your operating system).
ThermoMonkey - Sunday, October 19, 2008 - link
Sorry to say but that's not true at all. The Video card takes the audio signal from a sound card and combines the sound with the video output to pass through the HDMI. Look for your self http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd4500/index.htm...">http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd4500/index.htm..."HDMI - Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support delivering 8-channel audio. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of colors when connected to a capable HDTV."
It says surround sound support (not integrated) which only means that it connects to an on board (mobo) sound card via PCI bus to provide 7.1 channel audio.
Many competing graphics cards have a SPDIF connection to pass the audio through HDMI but that is only 2 channel. That's what separates this card from the rest.
woolooloo - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
Sorry, but actually it is you who are wrong. Listed in the specs table for the 4350 (and I'm sure the 4550 is the same):Integrated HD audio controller with up to 2 channel 48 KHz stereo or multi-channel (7.1) AC3 enabling a plug-and-play cable-less audio solution
VaultDweller - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - link
An additional question... Is there actually any reason that I should care about this with a 5.1 speaker/receiver set (linkage: http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet...">http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/sto...0551&....ThePooBurner - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - link
If yo are going to test something as a gaming alternative for those who want a bit of a boost in their gaming, try actually setting the games to settings people might use. Also, testing with just 2 games, both of which either were or are system breakers seems a bit... dumb.I would prefer the cards be tested with actual settings to see what they can ACTUALLY do and give a better indication of performance. It's been my experience that turning on some of the eyecandy and turning up the resolution for a slightly reduced framerate is preferred over looking at something ugly for hours. Also, why test the 780G instead of the 790G? or why not both?
Here is are test setups i would suggest that would be more reasonable and representative of what people would actually do with these cards.
1) 1024x768 Med Quality (as in the second down from the highest setting), no AA, Triliner/8x filtering.
2) 1024x768 High Quality, no AA, Triliner/8x filtering
3&4) Same as above but with 1280x1024(or 960).
These tests are much more inline with the testing that happens on their big brothers and allows for a much more quantitive comparison of what you are getting. Automatically testing everything at junk levels is worthless to people. It gives us no basis for comparison. We need apples to apple and orange to orange testing if we want to see what exactly the fruit we are looking at is. Also as a point of comparison it should include the 4850 or the 3850. Those are both very well performing cards that will give a good idea of how much more you would get for more money. But as this review currently stands it is of little to no worth to anyone.