The ATI Radeon 9550 is a discrete video card that uses the AGP interface on your computer. This is an older, 3D-capable card that supports up to Direct X 9 for graphical processing capabilities. The ATI card uses specific device drivers created by ATI to power the card and its 3D graphics features.
Interface
The AGP interface on the ATI Radeon 9550 supports 8X AGP transfers. The AGP interface is often used with the PCI card slots, because of their increased transfer speed. AGP 8X, also known as the AGP 3.0 revision, has a top transfer speed of 2.1 mbps. This is twice as fast as AGP 4x, allowing the card to process graphical information quickly and efficiently.
Memory
This graphics card has 256 megabytes of video memory using DDR memory. DDR stands for double data rate, further increasing the speed of the Radeon 9550 over graphics cards using the SD, or single data rate memory.
Catalyst
The ATI Catalyst drives comprise a proprietary software suite that controls everything from the resolution of the card to the settings on the 3D features. The ATI Radeon supports OpenGL and Direct X 9.0, and the specific 3D feature controls are provided in the ATI Catalyst control panel. Examples of settings you can change include Hydravision, multiple monitors, compatibility settings and TV-out.
Tags: Radeon 9550, card that, data rate, transfer speed