HIS IceQ RADEON HD 3650 Turbo 512MB, HIS IceQ III RADEON HD 3870 Turbo 512MB, MSI RADEON HD 3850 OC 256MB, PowerColor RADEON HD 3650 Extreme 512MB
Like most people neither wear designer clothes nor live in villas, most users cannot afford expensive powerful graphics cards like GeForce 8800GTX or RADEON HD 3870 X2 and choose cheaper solutions instead. So, this time we are going to review three Mid-End graphics cards of the $100-$180 price range and a more expensive HD 3870. All our contenders today are based on AMD (ATI) RADEON GPUs.
At the same time, our readers will get to know not only production-line HD 3850/3870 cards, but also the HD 3650. The latter card is essentially the RADEON 2600 PRO/XT. Everything is the same: architecture (120 streaming processors, 128-bit bus), similar design. And its frequencies are in between those of the 2600 PRO and the 2600 XT. That is the HD 3650 is actually a hybrid of the 2600 PRO and the 2600 XT. Why launch this product and give it a new name?
The fact is, the RV630 core, used in the RADEON 2600 cards, is manufactured by the 65-nm fabrication process. AMD wanted to squeeze maximum performance from this product, so it operated at very high frequencies and dissipated much heat. Having manufactured the RV635-based counterpart by the 55-nm fabrication process, AMD kills two birds with one stone: it reduces manufacturing costs of such GPUs and heat dissipation, preserving the operating frequency in between the 2600 PRO (600 MHz) and the 2600 XT (800 MHz), at about 725 MHz. If these are only domestic transformations in AMD that have to do with their requirements and needs, why do they offer the old product as a new card? Because no marketing department will miss an opportunity to advertise an old product, if there is an excuse—an updated GPU. We've already seen such methods. So users shouldn't be surprised.
Thus, all our readers must understand that the RADEON 3650 is a cross between the RADEON 2600 PRO and the RADEON 2600 XT in its performance. There are no other differences. We'll test this assumption below.
