ATI, graphics products group of Advanced Micro Devices, on Tuesday unveiled its new offerings for the low-end market. The new graphics cards will hardly allow to play latest video games with highest quality settings, but they will enable high-quality video as well as latest features on inexpensive personal computers.

“The ATI Radeon HD 4550 and ATI Radeon 4350 graphics cards are the final pieces of the puzzle in rounding out the highly successful ATI Radeon HD 4000 series family. AMD set out to lead performance at every price point and today we offer a complete family of graphics cards that delivers on our commitment of winning performance in each market segment,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s graphics products group.

The new ATI Radeon HD 4350 and 4550 are based on code-named ATI RV710 core that features 80 stream processing units, 8 texture units (TUs), 4 render back-ends (RBEs) as well as 64-bit memory controller. Both models feature GPU clock-speed of 600MHz, however, the model 4550 may be equipped with 256MB or 512MB of DDR3 memory operating at 1600MHz, whereas the model 4350 comes with 256MB of DDR2 memory clocked at 1000MHz.

ATI RV710 processor fully supports DirectX 10.1 application programming interface as well as advanced video engine that features hardware-accelerated decoding of high-definition video streams as well as post-processing of HD video. In addition, the new core also supports integrated 7.1-channel audio controller that allows to output sound using HDMI connector. The RV710 is made using 55nm process technology at TSMC and contains 242 million of transistors.

The new graphics cards will offer performance that will be even lower compared to last year’s GeForce 8600 GTS or Radeon HD 2400 XT, but since their main competitors will be variously branded versions of the code-named G86 (Nvidia GeForce 8400/8500/9400) graphics processing units, they may find themselves relatively successful on the market thanks to considerably improved architecture of the Radeon HD 4000-series family.

ATI Radeon HD 4550 512MB graphics card has recommended price-tag of $59, whereas ATI Radeon HD 4350 256MB should cost $39.

ATI Radeon HD 4550 and ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics cards will be available from y a dozen of add-in-board companies offering custom designs of the products. Partners include Asustek Computer, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, GeCube, Gigabyte Technology, HIS (Hightech Information Systems), Jetway, MSI, Palit Multimedia, PowerColor, Sapphire Technology and VisionTek.

Tags: ATI, AMD, Radeon