The title says it all, AnandTech got their hands on the lowest end versions of the new Radeon HD 4000 series and they liked what the saw for HTPC uses.
AnandTech Like the rest of the Radeon HD 4000 series (4870, 4850, 4670 and 4650) the new Radeon HD 4550 and 4350 both support 8-channel LPCM over HDMI. This makes these two cards the perfect addition to any HTPC for use in a 6 or 8 channel home theater setup. The Radeon HD 4550 reference design is a full height PCI Express x16 card but it’s completely passively cooled, making it an even better HTPC solution than the 4670 and cheaper. If you don’t care about gaming performance but want a good way of upgrading your PC to full hardware H.264/VC-1/MPEG-2 acceleration, the 4550 is perfect, especially if the multi-channel LPCM over HDMI output matters to you.
