Although the new Radeon HD 4550 and 4350 have just been announced, there are already benchmarks of the new cards and it looks like AMD is out to take on Nvidia in the entry level market with these new cards, as the Geforce 9400GT doesn't seem to stand a chance against the Radeon HD 4550 if early benchmarks are anything to go by.

Out of 11 benchmarks run by Impress, the Radeon HD 4550 comes out on top in all but two of them. It's just behind the Geforce 9400GT in F.E.A.R., and although there's a consistent 4-5 fps gap, this might be something that AMD can improve in future drivers. On the other hand, it doesn't look like AMD has much of a chance to catch up in Lost Planet, as the Geforce 9400GT is ahead by as much as 25fps in some tests at certain resolutions here.

Anandtech has pitched both of the new cards against various IGP solutions as well as a Geforce 9500GT, and neither card can really catch up with the 9500GT in terms of 3D performance. However, even the super cheap Radeon HD 4350 adds over 20fps compared to a Radeon HD 3200 IGP from a 780G chipset. For those that already own a Radeon HD 3650 or better, the good news is that you don't have to worry about "upgrading" as the new cards won't be faster in 3D.

You can find the Impress benchmarks here (in Japanese) and the Anandtech benchmarks here.