We recently reviewed the ATI Radeon HD4550 and HD4350 chipsets. Our conclusion stated that these cards would be perfect additions for the HTPC user looking to upgrade to hardware accelerated BD playback and 8-channel LPCM audio output via HDMI. We just received our first retail HD4350 product from MSI. It is available now for $39.99 (a $10 rebate is also available this month).
We are still testing this card along with several other budget video cards and processors for our final IGP Chronicles article. However, we wanted to provide a quick update on the H.264 playback and power consumption results with a couple of popular processors from Intel and AMD, the dual-core E5200 and 4850e.
The MSI R4350-D512H is a half height card design that features a large heatsink for passive cooling duties. The card includes 512MB of GDDR2 memory with a core clock at 600MHz and memory clock at 500MHz. MSI includes a driver CD and instruction manual only. Unfortunately, an ATI DVI-HDMI adapter is not included in the kit. We feel this is a mistake on MSI's part, as the card should find its way into many HTPC solutions.
The adapter is available online for $10 (the price of that rebate from MSI) or a friend might already have one if they recently purchased a HD4670, HD4850, or HD4870 card as most manufacturers included them in their kits. The R4350 supports dual-link DVI so resolutions up to 2560x1600 are possible. The chipset specifications are available here.
Let's take a quick look at the BD playback performance of the MSI R4350.
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Warren G - Monday, November 10, 2008 - link
I have this card....and it blew up!!!http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/4414/image00001...">http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/4414/image00001...
http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/3710/image00002...">http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/3710/image00002...
http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/1889/image00003...">http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/1889/image00003...
I used it for maybe ~10 hours
Badkarma - Wednesday, November 5, 2008 - link
According to some on AVSforum the HD4550 has poor SD deinterlacing performance and likely the HD4350 as well. Hopefully, Anandtech can look into this further.http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=1499...">http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=1499...
AlNasty - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
Appears the Asus card has HDMI DVI and D-SubIt sure seems like a lot of card for $40.
Strid - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
Strange that this card doesn't have a HDMI port. If you look at the PCB, you can see the layout for the pins to a wiring to a HDMI port. RIght there between the D-Sub and DVI ports.Great to see all the AMD/Intel IGP HTPC contestants in there. I totally agree with the choice of CPUs too. (Intel E5200 and AMD 4850E)
By the way, seems like NVIDIA GeForce 9300 boards rock??
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
See above: DVI-to-HDMI adapters address this perfectly well IMO.brentpresley - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
No, they do not.You cannot route digital audio over DVI through these converters.
And the GOOD cards out there that are low-profile already have DVI + HDMI ports on them.
So simply put: this was MSI being CHEAP. No other reason.
Sazar - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
Actually yes, they do.Nvidia cards do not. AMD cards, yep, and thats the biggest selling point for AMD's HTPC products.
Sazar - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
Why are there so many STUPID people in this world?This very same, erroneous point has been raised a few other times in this thread and been debunked. The product page itself CLEARLY points out the dvi/hdmi dongle and states, CLEARLY again, that audio AND video is supported.
This is one thing AMD does that Nvidia does not do. Unfortunately the review is of the AMD product, not the Nvidia product. Nvidia's HTPC cards do NOT do audio over the HDMI connector.
Please get your facts right.
rennya - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
With ATI 4xxx series, you can transport audio via the DVI-->HDMI dongle. The dongles that comes with ATI cards is special.brentpresley - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
This day an age, how can any company classify a Video Card as designed for the HTPC market when the card does not have HDMI output?While the chip may turn out to be great for HTPC, this card is a dud.