Connect 3D Radeon 9550SE ATI 128mb AGP Video Card

Monday, February 20th, 2006 | Reviews, Video Card Reviews

The world of gaming and upgrading video cards is ever-changing. So, what do you choose when faced with price or practicality? If you choose practicality, then there are some options out there for you that won’t hurt your bank account. One option is the Connect 3D Radeon 9550SE, which offers value for the casual gamer and PC enthusiast. This ATI 128mb video card offers somewhat powerful graphics that take care of lighting and texture, which frees up the CPU for other tasks.

Some common features that this ATI video card comprises are:

Smoothvision™ 2.1
Smartshader™ 2.0

Smoothvision™ 2.1
Smoothvision™ 2.1 technology utilizes Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering techniques to offer users a new level of image quality. It allows for 6X gamma sampled MSAA and adds 6:1 color compression.

Smartshader™ 2.0
Smartshader™ technology enables users to reach faster speeds, which offers the ability to experience complex movie-quality effects. It providers up to four, always on, full precision DirectX 9 pixel shaders and allows for up to 3.9 billion shader operations per second. That ensures fast and flawless special effects in all types of applications.

Specifications

GPU/VPU – RADEON 9550se
Maximum Resolution – 2048 x 1536 @ 85Hz
Video Memory – 128MB
Memory Type – DDR SDRAM
Memory Bandwidth – 6.4GB/sec
Interface Type & Speed – AGP, 8X
Connector(s) – DVI, TV/S-Video, VGA

While this card isn’t the most popular choice or even the best in its price range, it does maintain some advantages. Though it does not include as many features as other brands, it offers an upgrade in technology for the elements that it does include. This allows for a better, overall gaming experience. Some users have been able to play games, such as Doom 3, on the highest settings without any glitches. This ATI 128mb video card comes with a heatsink, but the addition of a fan allows it to run slightly cooler and be extremely overclockable.

In addition to the features listed above, the Connect 3D Radeon 9550SE does have Videoshader™ which helps with the seamless integration of pixel shaders within video processing. This graphics card has good features for the price and is well-suited for most productivity tasks, including the casual gamer. Priced around $60, it is relatively inexpensive compared to other mainstream 3D 128mb AGP video cards on the market. This package contains one cable, a manual, one CD, and a composite adapter, which makes this card a good recommendation to anyone who wants to update their graphics power while saving a little money.