ATI 100-437105 Radeon 9550 256MB 128-bit DDR AGP Video Card

First let me say that if you plan on playing the latest games in full resolution, this card is not for you. If you plan on just upgrading your on board video so you can play older games and have a DVI and TV out put, this is your card. This card will play Call of Duty, Medal of Honor at almost max quality settings with no problems. It will play Doom 3 with medium settings nicely. Quake 4 so so on low to medium settings. For newer games, you need more powerful card.

Another thing that annoys me with many reviewers here. They don't research the products they buy and therefore are dissapointed when a $79 video card won't play the latest game at maximum resolution. You have to have realistic expectations people. Those games require a very powerful video card. You don't take a Honda Civic to the Indy 500 and complain that the car is a piece of junk.... That being said there are plenty of charts that compare all of the ATI cards and rate them by speed, etc. This card has a...Read more

This is a great, fast video card for its price, faster than any nvidia card at this price and stable if you install the drivers correctly.
I gave this 4 stars just because the drivers can be hard to understand sometimes. Like I said this card ultra stable if you install all the driver "correctly".

Also remember to Use AtiTool and overclock the card to make it own even more :) .
My Graphics were 56.2% faster on doom 3 after overclocking it.
Overclocking the card doesn't really hurt it ether, because an ati radeon 9550 is actually an underclocked ati radeon 9600 with "double ram".

Overclocking this makes it better than an ati radeon 9600 priced at 170$, meaning your saving 40$ and geting a better card if you were planning to buy an ati radeon 9600 and bought the 9550 instead.

This is a great card for the value and I reccommend anyone to buy this if they don't want to spend over 130$ on a video card.

I purchased this card as an upgrade to my HP pavillion a706n, for the purpose of preparing to run the newest episodes of HALF LIFE 2. I wanted the full directx9.c compatibility, but I didn't want to spend too much money since the newest cards are currently 1) too expensive, and 2) about to become outclassed by the even newer cards anyway. I decided to settle on the RADEON 9550.

It was very easy to install. AGP cards have that nice little hook on one side of the pin assembly, making it next to impossible to install the card backwards. Driver installation was simple, but one has to remember to remove any old drivers from old graphics cards (even if you previously had an NVIDIA card). The manual attempts, I kid you not, to confuse you with lots of recomendations to update BIOS drivers, Motherboard drivers, etc... if you have a fairly new computer, you can ignore these. Once that's done, you have to look up the newest Catylist drivers, which is found on ATI's website...Read more