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Powercolor HD 3650 Xtreme 512 MB |
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Value and Conclusion
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| 8.4 | The new AMD HD 3650 cards are not much more than a new product revision fixing bugs and lowering production cost. The only immediate benefit for the user is the reduced power draw and the slightly reduced price. In a segment where the price matters most, this card has the potential for AMD to increase their market share some more. AMD's new VGA numbering scheme suggests that the card is 40.38% faster than the previous 2600 XT (2600 vs. 3650), in reality it is just 2%. CrossFireX support is a nice technological demonstration feature, but not very useful for a card of this performance level, unless AMD gives us VGA cards with four or eight GPU sockets on them. A more interesting possible use of this card could be AGP. AMD's PCIE-to-AGP bridge, called Rialto, works extremely well and can be implemented on this card very easily. This would result in a solid offering for all the AGP users out there who want to upgrade for small money. The performance of the PowerColor HD 3650 is not bad itself, while you can not compare it against the much more expensive highend products, it is still sufficient for most games today at lower quality settings (1024x768 no/2x AA). Just like in all current ATI products, the UVD video decode engine is included which offers best in class video decode with almost no CPU usage and low power draw. |
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