Date: August 13th, 2004
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: HISDIGITAL
<---SHOP FOR AN ATI RADEON 9550 BASED VIDEOCARD HERE

CORPORATE PROFILE

HIS strives to provide our customers the best value and service on accordance to our founding principles. Today, HIS is one of the largest graphics companies in Hong Kong and rank premier in the world of multimedia graphics. In this fast changing world and very especially in the field of PC, a flexible attribute is competitive advantage. Over the years, HIS earned its reputation worldwide as offering a flexibility that other just cannot match. HIS moves fast. HIS reacts fast.

Commitment to excellence is the bedrock of our company direction. We expand by providing our customers worldwide with the best quality and service to achieve the fundamental objective the Total Customer Satisfaction. As such our worldwide customers are very loyal to us.

PRODUCT INTRODUCTION

When most people think about graphics accelerators, the constant enthusiast videocard review rotation on hardware sites may have some computer users thinking that high end cards make up the majority of the market. Oddly enough, when the dust settles and the numbers are calculated, enthusiast videocards might make up 20-25% of the videocards snatched up by willing buyers and that could be deemed as slightly exaggerated. Where the real volume is seen is in the higher end budget to performance mainstream dominated by the likes of the FX5200 Ultra, FX5600 & FX5700 from Nvidia and the 9600, 9600Pro and the 9600XT from ATI. Most people want a cost effective videocard that performs well for their needs for moderate gaming. They could care less about their competitive benchmarking scores.

When I was first confronted with the Radeon 9550 chipset, a quick look around the net had me learning that the Radeon 9550 VPU was first supposed to be targeted towards the Asian market exclusively where sales were very good. So what is the smartest thing to do with this cheap DX9 capable technology? Bring it to the big daddy of the technology consumer market and have North America try it out.

For the price, you will see in the forth coming pages that this card performs well under stock condition and packs quite an exceptional punch once it is overclocked.

Let's take a look.....