Sapphire Radeon HD 5550 Ultimate

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by Rob Williams on May 10, 2010 in Graphics & Displays

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.

Page 6 – F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

Five out of the seven current games we use for testing are either sequels, or titles in an established series. F.E.A.R. 2 is one of the former, following up on the very popular First Encounter Assault Recon, released in fall of 2005. This horror-based first-person shooter brought to the table fantastic graphics, ultra-smooth gameplay, the ability to blow massive chunks out of anything, and also a very fun multi-player mode.

Three-and-a-half years later, we saw the introduction of the game’s sequel, Project Origin. As we had hoped, this title improved on the original where gameplay and graphics were concerned, and it was a no-brainer to want to begin including it in our testing. The game is gorgeous, and there’s much destruction to be had (who doesn’t love blowing expensive vases to pieces?). The game is also rather heavily scripted, which aides in producing repeatable results in our benchmarking.

Manual Run-through: The level used for our testing here is the first in the game, about ten minutes in. The scene begins with a travel up an elevator, with a robust city landscape behind us. Our run-through begins with a quick look at this cityscape, and then we proceed through the level until the point when we reach the far door as seen in the above screenshot.

With F.E.A.R., we are seeing near-identical framerates as we did with MW2 and BiB… around 17 FPS at 1920×1080… also known as: horrible.

Graphics Card
Best Playable
Min FPS
Avg. FPS
NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
45
95.767
ATI HD 5870 1GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
62
91.733
NVIDIA GTX 480 1.5GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
52
82.357
ATI HD 5770 1GB CrossFireX
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
57
87.194
ATI HD 5850 1GB (ASUS)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
51
73.647
NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB (EVGA)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
39
62.014
NVIDIA GTX 275 896MB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
37
57.266
ATI HD 5830 1GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
40
57.093
NVIDIA GTX 260 896MB (XFX)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
29
48.110
ATI HD 5770 1GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
31
47.411
ATI HD 5750 1GB (Sapphire)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
27
39.563
NVIDIA GTX 250 1GB (EVGA)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
24
36.331
ATI HD 5670 512MB (Reference)
1920×1080 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
31
46.87
NVIDIA GT 240 512MB (ASUS)
1920×1080 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 4xAF
30
45.039
ATI HD 5570 1GB (Sapphire)
1920×1080 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 4xAF
22
40.430
ATI HD 5550 1GB (Sapphire)
1920×1080 – Medium Detail, 0xAA, 0xAF
18
34.363

Once again, lowering the detail levels to medium and disabling AA fixed up our problems. The game wasn’t as fluid as could be, but it was certainly playable enough to be enjoyed.

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Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.

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