The time has come to test out one of the, if not the, most graphically intensive games of all time.  With the Battlefield 3 beta just around the corner, our graphics cards will need all of the help they can get.  This help will present itself in all new fresh video drivers.  These drivers will help the game run smooth and (hopefully) remove any driver incompatibilities that are present at the moment.  Anyone who played the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 beta knows exactly about those.

Recently, Nvidia announced that they are working on their new driver for their cards.  The company states that they plan to have their drivers release on September 26th, a day before early beta begins.

In response, AMD then announced that they will also be releasing all new graphics drivers in order for us gamers to take complete advantage of our graphics cards.  AMD’s drivers are also set to release on September 26th.

I have to admit that in the last year or so, ATI has really shaken things up in the realm of desktop graphics cards. Since the launch of the 38xx series, we’ve slowly upgraded almost all of our gaming rigs around here to ATI cards. That’s not to say that Nvidia isn’t putting out great cards, but the price/ performance barrier that ATI has been hitting is unbeatable. They’re looking to expand that into the sub-$60 price-point with their new round of Radeon HD 4550 and 4350 cards.

The cards will support DirectX 10.1 and each sport an HDMI connection that’s capable of delivering 7.1 channel audio. As for power, the Radeon HD 4550 with its 512MB of DDR3 offers up 96 GFLOPS of power for just $55. Both it and its 4350 cousin with its 256MB of DDR2 will consume less than 20 watts under full load, which makes them cheap, powerful and green.

On paper, these cards sound like they’ll be a great deal for the gamer on a budget. We’ll try to get our hands on one when they hit shelves later this month to see how they stack up against some of the more expensive cards.

If you’re looking for the specs for each GPU, here’s the 4350, and here’s the 4550. Enjoy!

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