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To get out of the usual game testing style, we decided to test some hardware as well. This week, we got an ATi X550 XT with 128 of Ram and 128 bits. The big deal is that the card is on the new PCI-Express 16X adapter, unlike older video cards that are on AGP.

Now I always had my doubts about ATi, mostly because I had nVidia cards for over seven years on my PC. This is the right opportunity to test whether ATi cards are better than nVidia or not.

Firstly, I will begin with the box, as it is the first thing you see at any video card. It has a nice design, but that does not influence the cards performances. We can see a nice 3D model on the box, and the specifications of the board. Like I said in the beginning, it is a 128 MB card with 128 bits on PCI-Ex 16X.

The insides of the box

After I opened it, I was socked to see what is inside. Inside, I could only see the board, two wires meant for S-Vid and a CD. I mean, where is the manual? At first, I thought I lost it even before opening it, but it seems that the manual was on the CD. As always, I thought wrong. On the CD, you can find an online manual, which only refers to the driver installation for “dummies”.

The card looks somewhat nice. It is of red color, with a small yet powerful fan in the middle along with a small heat sink. It has both an analog output and a digital one as well. It also has an S-Vid out so you can connect it to a TV or even better, plasma.

The video card can be easily inserted into position on the motherboard, provided the fact that no wires are blocking the way. Every motherboard has a mechanism to secure it in place, usually some sort of plastic ring at the back of the PCI-Express slot.

Now it is time I started explaining the details of the video card. Once the ATi Catalyst was installed, I wanted to see how far it could go in terms of resolution. It can easily achieve a resolution of 2048×1536 at 70Hz, I do not know for sure because I do not have any monitor or plasma to go that high.

Next, I played a bit with the options the Catalyst provided me with. You can either set the card for maximum performance or maximum quality, or you can just leave it between.

In addition, if you see the image in a side, you can rotate the picture, move it, enlarge or shrink it all from one single panel in the Control Center. You may also see what other devices you have on hooked up.

The ATi Catalyst permits you to see real-time changes that you do, without the need of restarting or saving the settings.

Even though I searched quite a bit through the Catalyst, I did not quite see an overclocking option, which only leaves me to believe that it can be done through other specialized programs or, even though I did not find it, through the Catalyst.

Specifications

It has a DirectX 9.0 Architecture with 4 Full Precision DX9 Pipelines. This ensures large transit of data to the most important parts of the video card. In addition, because it is architected for PCI Express, it ensures better performance and up to 8GB of bi-directional bandwidth.

The Smartshader boosts the impact of next generation of 3D games. It supports ten times more instructions than the typical amount used in today’s latest titles. The 3Dc, which is an image enhancement and acceleration technology assures a nice 4:1 normal map compression and decompression. It also reduces memory footprint and the accelerated surface detail emulates high polygon characters and scenes.

The Videoshader can easily integrate pixel shaders with video. As such, it has fullstream for DivX, WMV 9, and Real, an acceleration of MPEG 1/2/4 decode and encode. In addition, it features new video algorithms for 3:2 Pulldown, Interlacing and Deblocking. The card also has added support for high-end HD resolutions.

The new HyperZ now provides double the Z compression, 8:1 and it also has an enhanced Hi-Z buffer.

Smoothvision now features improved AA and AF performance and 12x effective Temporal MSAA Dual Link DVI Support for high-resolution DVI panels, above 1920×1200.

The ATi Catalyst has almost a rock-solid stability and regular updates bundled in a user-friendly customizable control center.

Because the video card occupies only one slot, unlike SLI video cards, it has a low voltage and low power architecture.