Introduction

PowerColor, unleash the gaming power. Somehow we figure that most of you know PowerColor already, which means an introduction might not be needed. But just in case for those who don't know PowerColor yet, we will share it with you. PowerColor, established by TuL Corporation in 1997, is a graphics industry leading brand name and also well known for its outstanding performance and innovative technology. As a leading provider of graphics cards, PowerColor offers powerful, reliable and cost effective solutions to customers worldwide. And to succeed in this competitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed to market, cost and service. PowerColor strives to the very best, both to their customers and to society, thereby making a brighter future for tomorrow.

No so long ago we saw the introduction of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card which is actually a high-end dual-GPU monster deducted from the Radeon HD 3870 graphics card. The Radeon HD 3800 series have brought a smile on many ATI enthusiasts who gotten a bit disappointed by the Radeon HD 2900 fiasco, if we can express in that way. So ATI went back to the design table and came up with a better and cheaper RV670 chip which brought back some competition with NVIDIA and also lowered the price extensively for some excellent performing video cards. Next, was to also come up with a better mid-range products and that is where the Radeon HD 3650 comes into the picture. AMD couldn't sit and wait too long so they come up with the DirectX 10.1 compatible graphics core the RV635 and also supporting PCI Express 2.0.

For the most part, the specifications of the Radeon HD 3650 resemble somehow those of the recent high-end Radeon HD 3800 series. Based on the somehow successful Radeon HD 3800 series, the Radeon HD 3600 series brings DirectX 10.1 to the masses, empowering every PC gamer to enjoy the next generation graphical experience. The power of geometry shader, unique instancing, massive texture arrays and high dynamic range rendering will all be shown in an amazing line up of DirectX 10 titles coming out the last few months of the year. The Radeon HD 3600 series takes all the great architectural features of the Radeon HD 3800 series and makes it available for the more mid-range minded buyers who want to spend about $100-125. And at the same time these Radeon HD 3600 series will have to withstand the G94 based NVIDIA products such as the GeForce 9600 GT and upcoming other re-spins.

The Radeon HD 3650 is the successor of the Radeon HD 2600 PRO, which had a hard time keeping up with the GeForce 8600 series as great value DirectX 10 graphics card. With the Radeon HD 3600 series we expect that ATI can turn the tables and become one of the popular DirectX 10 accelerators. The Radeon HD 3600 series are available in and several variations depending on the memory used. First you got the Radeon HD 3650 which comes with DDR2 memory and can be equipped with either 256MB or 512MB memory. The better part is the Radeon HD 3650 featuring the faster GDDR3 or GDDR4 memory chips. The Radeon HD 3650 GPU contains 378 million transistors, using the new 55nm architecture and implements a highly parallel, unified shader design, consisting of 120 individual stream processors.

Main Specifications

• Radeon HD 3650 (RV635 at 800MHz)
• 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 Memory (1800MHz)
• High-speed 256-bit Memory Interface
• Memory Bandwidth of 38.4GB/s
• PCI Express 2.0 x16 Compatibility
• High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection
• H.264 Playback with Avivo HD Engine
• Multi-GPU CrossFireX Interconnect Support
• DVI-I Connector for Analog/Digital Display
• HDMI Interface Display Connector

It didn't take too long for AMD to realize that their Radeon HD 2600 series didn't make a good start by not being able take back the mid-range performance crown on the graphics card market. But that didn't stop them from releasing the Radeon HD 2600 XT which came at a very nice price tag with decent performance. But in the end it wasn't as successful as wanted and with NVIDIA taken the lead with their popular GeForce 8600 series it was time for AMD to move one step further. So the next step is now, with the introduction of the Radeon HD 3600 series, supporting the PCI Express 2.0 interface and also being DirectX 10.1 ready. This means that AMD actually has the first mid-range video card supporting the latest DirectX 10.1 technology, quite ahead of time of the competition and actually games supporting it.

And due to the RV635 being a distinct new chip, based upon the same principles present on the Radeon HD 3800 series, it does set some expectations. And although the architecture is somehow deducted from the R600 chip, some changes are made to the manufacturing process. The RV635 GPU's on these cards are built using a 55nm manufacturing process, and they are the first shipping graphics cards to do so. Compared with the GeForce 8600 series, these ATI variants have a greater number of stream processors, but fewer raster operation and texture management units. The Radeon HD 3650 Xtreme card from PowerColor is actually equipped with the so called PRO version, but the suffix will not be used in the official naming for these new products.

The PowerColor version we got in our hand though is a bit more special as it comes with a dual slot professional cooling solution, which is optimized by ZEROtherm. Due to this better cooling system, we can also see that the clock settings are not the reference settings but are increased for this Xtreme edition. This means that the Xtreme version is clocked at 800/1800MHz which is nice boost when looking at the default ATI settings of 725/1600MHz. The Radeon HD 3850 also supports a more advanced version of the multi-GPU solution, CrossFire. In fact this is now the CrossFireX technology that allows you to bundled more than two cards together taking your gaming experience to the next level with more scalability, performance and compatibility.