While the average PC enthusiast may gawk endlessly over pages of reviews of high-end power hungry graphics cards, jaw slackened by the frame rates and 3DMark score that they might find, at the end of the month it is the low to mid-range card that is purchased most often than not. Price typically comes into consideration, but it's not the only concern. Availability, compatibility and other issues factor in to a buyers decision as well. Sometimes it simply boils down to the fact that the average Joe clearing stages in Peggle or watching the latest videos on YouTube simply doesn't need all of that horsepower. AMD's Radeon HD 3650 is one of the cards that can satisfy mainstream users. - HotHardware

Diamond Viper HD 3650 1GB Graphics Edition Review

Based on the RV635, and off-shoot of the RV670, the Radeon HD 3650 is architecturely similar to the more powerful Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 models, but with a narrower memory interface and far fewer stream processors. It too is built on a 55nm process, requiring less power than previous ATI cards and, as a result, radiating less heat. With sales predictions for this card being high, and production costs low, it's almost a no-brainer that many of ATI's partners look into adding a Radeon HD 3650 to their line-up. Diamond has, with the release of the Viper HD 3650 1GB, added two different variants.

Diamond's Viper HD 3650 1GB card is small and compact like most of the other models out there, unburdened by large heatsinks, fans, etc. With its emphasis on price and low power consumption, the smaller footprint of this card makes it ripe for using in the close quarters of a small fatcor or other home theater oriented PC where high resolution gaming is not a primary concern at all. Quite noticeable is the lack of both CrossFire and power connectors, as this Radeon HD 3650's CrossFire and power is supplied by the PCI Express slot alone. The heatsink and fan are small, mounted over the RV635 and the memory chips.

If their gamble was to increase the memory buffer in lieu of any speed tweaks, than we have to say that Diamond lost this bet. Placing 1GB of 400MHz DDR2 memory on board the Radeon HD 3650 1GB model effectively dropped performance well below that of a rival card from Sapphire. On the bright side, Diamond's card did manage to compete head to head with a GeForce 8600 GTS from Gigabyte, that sells for a $30-40 premium. As a general rule, we are always pleased to see a manufacturer go back to the drawing board and make a card their own. Whether that means overclocking, customizing and optimizing.

Diamond's Viper HD 3650 1GB has, of course, the 1GB memory buffer appended right there in the name of the product. And, as we have seen, there definitely seems to be a trend with more and more memory placed on board graphics cards to help with caching textures at higher resolutions. So, we should be pleased with this effort, but overall the performance of this Radeon HD 3650 version wound up disappointing us instead. The addition of the extra 512MB of memory makes this card currently hovering just north of $100. While we've been positive towards Diamond's products, we're choosing to steer clear of this one.