Sapphire HD 4550 512MB DDR3

Most of the time the only reason to add a new graphics card to your computer is to play new games. Nowadays, though, they’re beginning to have some other uses. In particular, some graphics cards can help with playing high-definition video.

Sapphire’s HD 4550 is one such card. Its graphics processor is specially designed to handle the latest types of high-definition video, such as H.264. This means that when you play a Blu-ray movie disc the computer can pass the difficult task of working with these video files straight to the HD 4550, taking the strain away from the processor.

We tested Blu-ray decoding in a dual-core PC with 2GB of memory. Without the HD 4550 installed the processor was working fairly hard, running at around 70 per cent of its capacity just to show the video. With the HD 4550 installed this fell to around 20 per cent as the graphics card took the strain. If your PC is struggling to play Blu-ray movies, adding a card of this type could be just the ticket.

The card also includes a few accessories that could prove handy if you have a PC designed for playing media files. There’s a half-height bracket, so it can be fitted into thin PC cases, and a huge range of video outputs: as well as the usual VGA and DVI you can use HDMI, component video and composite video, allowing you to connect just about any TV. The card has a small cooling fan, but we found that this wasn’t noticeable over the computer’s existing fan.

If you want to play the latest games with all the fancy graphical effects turned on then the 4550 isn’t ideal – modern games will run, but you’ll normally need to sacrifice either quality or speed. It’ll handle older or less demanding games with no trouble, though, and enabled all the fancy desktop effects in Vista.

All in all, Sapphire’s 4550 is a card ideal for a small group of users. If your PC is used for playing video files or Blu-ray discs it’s ideal, but gamers should look elsewhere.