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ATI HD 4550 vs nVidia 9400 GT Review

Author Edward Chester
Published 23rd Oct 2008
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ATI HD 4550 vs nVidia 9400 GT
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Very recently we looked at ATI's latest 'mainstream' graphics card offering, the HD 4670, and also briefly touched on nVidia's competing circa £60 part in the same article. Putting aside, for a moment, which was actually better, the overwhelming point that took away from reviewing those cards was just how much graphical processing power you can get for £60. If only the state of PC gaming wasn't in massive decline at the moment I'd be inclined to hail this as a truly great era for the PC gamer.

I digress, though. For today I'm not here to discuss the whys and wherefores of the PC gaming industry. Instead I'm going to take a look at what spending around £40 on a graphics card will get you. Specifically I'll be picking apart ATI's new HD 4550 and nVidia's new 9400 GT.


Now both cards are actually quite difficult to buy as very few shops and e-tailers seem to be stocking them. There are, however, a few places with cards available and based on those few shops it seems the HD 4550 is the more expensive of the two, costing as it does around £45. The 9400 GT, meanwhile, can be had for as little as £35.

Of course, raw cost is not the most important figure. What's most significant is your price/performance ratio. So if the HD 4550 outperforms the 9400 GT by double then it has a higher price:performance ratio and would get our recommendation. So that's what we'll be looking at a bit later on.


Also, important to consider is the other multimedia capabilities of these cards. With HD video nearing ubiquity, you don't want to be left behind with a graphics card (and/or CPU) that can't cope with playing back HD video. This is obviously of particular importance if you're thinking of equipping your Media Center PC with one of these low cost cards but is also something to consider if you're just looking for a new card for your all-rounder desktop PC. Thankfully with the advances that both nVidia and ATI have been making recently in this area, both these cards will cope quite happily playing back all the usual HD formats, leaving your CPU free to perform other tasks - all you need to do now is buy a Blu-ray drive and a few discs to play.

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comment Ed said on 24th October 2008

Cheers, I've corrected it now. That'll teach me to write a graphics head to head in a day.

comment Xiphias said on 24th October 2008

With 22" monitors being pretty much standard on new PC bundles these days is 800x600 appropriate any longer?

comment Ed said on 24th October 2008

@Xiphias

Well, quite but it's better than nothing. Most cheap computers with integrated Intel graphics simply won't even run any modern games.

comment Hugo said on 24th October 2008

8x6 is still a good test to do because it makes just about any game CPU limited, so you get a good idea of the scaling all the way from from "GPU under no stress" to &quo... more

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