The Sapphire HD5550 Ultimate incorporates most of the features wanted in an HTPC; passive cooling, enough graphics processing power to handle HD content and HDMI out along with VGA and HDMI.  It isn’t going to be doing much gaming, the performance is about equivalent to a GeForce G210 in most cases sometimes up to twice as good, but that is really not where this cards strong point are.  Drop by Overclockers Club if you are shopping for an HTPC card or if you do CAD as this card does support DirectCompute 5.0 technology.

“The DirectCompute 5.0 technology is going to allow you to use the card for CAD applications and give you better performance than using an integrated video solution. DVD and Blu-ray playback is also a big plus with this card if you are looking to build an HTPC, as it will allow you to use what ever format disc you wish to, only being limited to the drive that you have installed in the system.”

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