Power Consumption and Conclusions
Despite the performance deficit that the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB card sees in the majority of our tests, it doesn’t use much less power than the older 8600 GTS from NVIDIA that uses half the memory. The idle power consumption on the Sapphire card is good – 15 watts lower than the 8600 GTS – but at load that difference falls to only 6 watts.
Performance
For its price point, the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB graphics card is a decent performer. It was able to play the various titles we threw at it including Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, though obviously at lower image quality settings than we have used on other, more expensive graphics boards. The problem was that the BFG 8600 GTS card that we tested it against, that was selling at nearly the same price as of this writing, performed better across the entire suite of games we used.
It is interesting to see how the 8600 GTS architecture coupled with half of the memory (256MB compared to the Sapphire card’s 512MB) was able to best the Radeon HD 3650. We have often debated the value of extremely large frame buffers on these types of low-end graphics cards; hell we have even seen companies offer up a 1GB version of the 3650! This seems to be a big waste of money and effort in nearly all cases…. It is possible that running the HD 3650 with 256MB of memory would cause a dramatic performance drop just based on the specific architectural efficiencies.
Features
For an HTPC or similar computer, the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB does have a lot to offer. With an integrated sound chip, and included DVI-to-HDMI adapter that supports both video and audio output, installing it in a system to place near your home theater makes a lot of sense. While NVIDIA and AMD’s video playback features have been very comparable in recent years, the 8600 GTS is definitely lacking in this area compared to the HD 3650 from AMD because of its architectural age.
One other possible advantage that the Sapphire HD 3650 has is the ability to run CrossFire on a mix of motherboards that NVIDIA’s SLI won’t allow. You can choose an AMD 700-series chipset like the 780G, 790 or 770 as well as Intel P35, X38 and X48 motherboards to add as many as four graphics cards to your system. With NVIDIA’s SLI you forced to use an NVIDIA chipset motherboard for either AMD or Intel platforms.
Pricing and Availability
The Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB GDDR3 model that we reviewed here today can be found for $102 – $82 with a $20 mail-in rebate. The BFG 8600 GTS 256MB card we tested is available for $104 or $79 after a $25 mail-in rebate. That is about as equal footing as you can get when comparing two graphics cards.
With the prices equal, the obvious winner here is the 8600 GTS card from BFG and NVIDIA – it is a better performer and sometimes by a large margin. What might have given the Sapphire card a boost was if we had not used the overclocked card; the standard HD 3650 can be found for $74 or $64 after a mail-in rebate which could make the performance differences a lot more palatable.
Final Thoughts
When the Radeon HD 3650 card was first released we were a little underwhelmed by the specifications as it seemed that nothing had been improved upon when compared to the previous, RV600-based HD 2600-series of cards. And in fact that is the case: performance remains mostly the same while power consumption has dropped and thus heat output too. That doesn’t make the HD 3650 a home run though as NVIDIA’s answers to the card continue to stack up and perform better – the 8600 GTS with half the frame buffer was easily outpacing the Sapphire HD 3650 card with 512MB of GDDR3 memory even when overclocked. While the Sapphire card is not a bad choice for anyone looking for a low budget gaming card, it’s definitely not our first pick.
For its price point, the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB graphics card is a decent performer. It was able to play the various titles we threw at it including Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, though obviously at lower image quality settings than we have used on other, more expensive graphics boards. The problem was that the BFG 8600 GTS card that we tested it against, that was selling at nearly the same price as of this writing, performed better across the entire suite of games we used.
It is interesting to see how the 8600 GTS architecture coupled with half of the memory (256MB compared to the Sapphire card’s 512MB) was able to best the Radeon HD 3650. We have often debated the value of extremely large frame buffers on these types of low-end graphics cards; hell we have even seen companies offer up a 1GB version of the 3650! This seems to be a big waste of money and effort in nearly all cases…. It is possible that running the HD 3650 with 256MB of memory would cause a dramatic performance drop just based on the specific architectural efficiencies.
Features
For an HTPC or similar computer, the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB does have a lot to offer. With an integrated sound chip, and included DVI-to-HDMI adapter that supports both video and audio output, installing it in a system to place near your home theater makes a lot of sense. While NVIDIA and AMD’s video playback features have been very comparable in recent years, the 8600 GTS is definitely lacking in this area compared to the HD 3650 from AMD because of its architectural age.
One other possible advantage that the Sapphire HD 3650 has is the ability to run CrossFire on a mix of motherboards that NVIDIA’s SLI won’t allow. You can choose an AMD 700-series chipset like the 780G, 790 or 770 as well as Intel P35, X38 and X48 motherboards to add as many as four graphics cards to your system. With NVIDIA’s SLI you forced to use an NVIDIA chipset motherboard for either AMD or Intel platforms.
Pricing and Availability
The Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB GDDR3 model that we reviewed here today can be found for $102 – $82 with a $20 mail-in rebate. The BFG 8600 GTS 256MB card we tested is available for $104 or $79 after a $25 mail-in rebate. That is about as equal footing as you can get when comparing two graphics cards.
With the prices equal, the obvious winner here is the 8600 GTS card from BFG and NVIDIA – it is a better performer and sometimes by a large margin. What might have given the Sapphire card a boost was if we had not used the overclocked card; the standard HD 3650 can be found for $74 or $64 after a mail-in rebate which could make the performance differences a lot more palatable.
Final Thoughts
When the Radeon HD 3650 card was first released we were a little underwhelmed by the specifications as it seemed that nothing had been improved upon when compared to the previous, RV600-based HD 2600-series of cards. And in fact that is the case: performance remains mostly the same while power consumption has dropped and thus heat output too. That doesn’t make the HD 3650 a home run though as NVIDIA’s answers to the card continue to stack up and perform better – the 8600 GTS with half the frame buffer was easily outpacing the Sapphire HD 3650 card with 512MB of GDDR3 memory even when overclocked. While the Sapphire card is not a bad choice for anyone looking for a low budget gaming card, it’s definitely not our first pick.
