ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 Review

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 is an integrated graphics processor that can be found in 2010 AMD Mainstream Platform-based laptops.

The DirectX 10.1-compatible on-board chip is a part of the M880G chipset and includes 4 ROPs, 40 unified shaders, a 32-bit BUS width, and the UVD2 high-definition video decoder. GPU and memory clocks are 500MHz and 533MHz, respectively.

In this review, I have tested the Radeon HD 4250 graphics in a 15.6″ Acer Aspire 5551 mid-range laptop with AMD Athlon II P320 dual core 2.1GHz processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard drive, 1366×768 screen resolution, and Windows 7 OS.

The 4250 can be also found in notebooks with AMD Vision sticker, that include other Athlon CPUs, as well AMD Phenom, Turion, and V series processors.

I’ve tried out games and did gaming benchmarks, as well as test of HD video playback on the GPU.

3DMark 06
1724 3DMarks
564 SM2.0 Score
685 HDR/SM3.0 Score
1678 CPU Score

Windows 7 Experience Index
4.1 Desktop Performance for Windows Aero
5.3 3D Business and Gaming Graphics Performance

Crysis
Low Settings (1280×720) – Average: 21.14fps

Far Cry 2
Low Settings (1280×720) – Average: 20.33fps

World in Conflict
Low Settings (1280×720) – Average: 34fps
Medium Settings (1280×720) – Average: 11fps

Half Life 2 – Lost Coast
High Settings (1280×720) – Average: 49.49fps
High Settings + maximal AA and AF (1280×720) – Average: 31.62fps

Quake 4
High Settings (1280×720) – Average: 33.25fps
Ultra High Settings (1280×720) – Average: 31.15fps

HD Video Playback CPU Usage
720p – 30% ~ %45
1080p – 45% ~ %65

Crysis and Far Cry 2 are playable on lowest settings, but even on these settings the gameplay is not 100% smooth. World in Conflict was flawless on graphics set to low, although the game allows users to further lower the quality and improve fps speed (lowest settings). Older games – Half Life 2 – Lost Coast and Quake 4 – can be played smoothly on high settings, and are playable even on the highest.

Regarding HD video playback, there were no glitches while playing 720p and 1080p videos.

The conclusion is that the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 is sufficient for playing newer 3D games on low settings, old 3D titles on high, as well as for HD video playback.

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