Over the last few months, NVIDIA has been enjoying the high-end graphics card market with their current GeForce 8800 series. AMD was unable to compete with NVIDIA with their Radeon HD 2900 series but the situation is getting better with the introduction of the Radeon HD 3800 series. Although AMD is still not able to take the performance crown away from NVIDIA, its latest Radeon HD 3850 is performing fairly close and their upcoming card may very well steal the crown away from NVIDIA. Although AMD was unable to compete with NVIDIA in the enthusiasts market, somehow now it is able to compete very well with NVIDIA in the mainstream and budget market. - Bjorn3D

PowerColor Radeon HD 3650 512MB Extreme Preview

Their latest technology in the Radeon HD 3850 has been ported to the mainstream and budget market with the introduction of the Radeon HD 3650 series January. Now, the Radeon HD 3650 has a very confusing naming scheme. Since AMD has decided to drop the letter extension for their graphic cards and simply uses numbers to indicate the class, you will now find that depending on the Radeon HD 3650 the clock speeds can differ. All of the Radeon HD 3650 will have the same engine clock of 725MHz. However, the amount, type and memory speed can differ. So be sure to watch out when you purchase your card.

The PowerColor Radeon HD 3650 comes in a rather small package that is filled with marketing information on the back. On the front, you will see an eye catching image. Inside the box, you will find another cardboard box that is protecting the cards and its components during shipping. The Xtreme lines from PowerColor comes with their own cooler that should offer a slightly better cooling than the stock AMD cooler. We do not have the reference card with stock AMD cooler so we cannot really compare the temperature difference. The cooler is pretty much takes up the whole front of the graphics card.

In addition to the modified cooler, the PowerColor Radeon HD 3650 also differ from AMD's reference design of 256MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1600MHz. Instead PowerColor has equipped the card with 512MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1800MHz. The memory that is used is Samsung 1.0ns type, and with a quick search online reveals a maximum frequency of 2000MHz. So there is some headroom left for overclocking. At the top of the card you will see two metal connectors designed for CrossFire operation, or actually it is the way that ATI is now supporting CrossFireX technology.

The PowerColor Radeon HD 3650 Xtreme is already overclocked to 800MHz core and 1800MHz memory from the standard Radeon HD 3650 of 725MHz core and 1600MHz memory, we may not be able to push it much further than it already is. We can see that the Overdrive limits the overlocking of the core to 850MHz and limits the memory to 1900MHz so we are being limited by the software. We believe that the memory can be pushed even higher due to the fact that the card uses Samsung memory that is rated at 2000MHz. However, without any good tool to overclock, we were not able to see how high it can be pushed.

The recent release of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card has brought AMD back into the graphics card competition. The Radeon HD 3650, which is the mainstream card, is an excellent choice for casual gamers or people who are into slightly older games. Despite its lack of the gaming performance, the Radeon HD 3650 actually is packed with many advanced features such as DirectX 10, PCI Express 2.0 and CrossFire support. This makes it an excellent choice for the home theatre PC, users who have integrated graphics or who wish to upgrade to use the aero interface under Vista while keeping the cost low.

If we have to be picky with the Radeon HD 3650 Xtreme, it would have be the dual slot cooler. We do appreciate the quietness and coolness but we do also prefer to see a smaller cooler if it can attain the same result. We actually would even prefer to have a silent heatpipe to completely avoid the need for the additional fan. Considering that the card is aimed toward casual gamers and home theatre PC users, we believe having a smaller cooler or even completely silent heatsink would have been a better choice.