Pros & Cons
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- Affordable, small, quiet, and power-efficient.
- Good video decoding features.
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- Not fast enough to run modern games the way they were meant to be played.
Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 Specs
| Card Width: | single |
| Graphics Memory: | 512 |
| Memory Clock Speed: | 1.6 |
| No. DVI Output(s): | 2 |
| RAMDAC Speed: | 400 |
| System Interface: | PCIe |
| Video Interfaces: | HDMI |
| Video Outputs: | S-Video |
| Warranty: | 24 months |
Graphics cards are sold to two groups of people. You have the knowledgeable PC user who plays games and wants something for the big AAA blockbuster shooter, strategy game, or World of Warcraft with every detail turned up. He or she may be thrifty or may spend a ton of money, but cards that fit this need typically costs at least $150.
Next you have somebody who bought an inexpensive PC with a relatively low-watt power supply—who tried playing a game and realized that the integrated graphics built into this PC just stinks. Either the game didn't run at all, or it ran full of artifacts and was unplayably slow even with all the details turned to low. There's no "graphics card" per se; the power supply probably doesn't include a PCIe power plug, and the idea of spending several hundred dollars on a graphics card for an inexpensive or aging PC seems like throwing good money away.
We mention this because the Radeon HD 3650 is a product aimed at the latter category, and it's important to have realistic expectations. Sapphire's card is a 512MB model that costs about $80—a reasonable and attractive price for the casual gamer who wants to play that fun 3D game or an educational game for the kids. You won't be able to crank up the details on the latest titles, but you can at least run them well, and for some people that's enough.
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Final Thoughts
Sapphire Radeon HD 3650
One of the better sub-$100 graphics cards, but it's still not good enough to make a cheap PC into a good gaming system. As a replacement for integrated graphics, it comes highly recommended.