AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 4550 Video Card Review

Temperatures

Video card temperatures and the heat generated by next-generation cards have become an area of concern among enthusiasts and gamers, so I took a closer look at how these cards generate heat under load.

In order to get proper temperature readings I used ATI’s Catalyst Control Center along in order to get the idle and load temperatures. With the card running at idle the temperature was observed to be 36C.

Running ATI Tool 0.27 beta 4 I was able to run the Radeon HD 4550 graphics card at full load and let it heat up for almost half an hour, which is where the card peaked out at 52C. This is a low temperature considering that the graphics card is just passive cooled. The test system did have a 120mm fan blowing across the board, but that is typical of many Do-It-Yourself cases on the market today.