When we last looked ATI's Radeon HD 3650 architecture in ASUS trim, we found the home theater centric video card wanting when it came to gaming. And while not geared towards the hardcore gamer, we expected a little more oomph than what we got. This time around we're getting down and dirty with HIS's Radeon HD 3650 with twice the amount of memory than the last version we looked at. If you've never heard of HIS before, we can hardly blame you. With ATI sitting on the sidelines for so long, NVIDIA has enjoyed a long run of market dominance, giving enthusiasts plenty of time to get familiar with BFG, EVGA, XFX and other NVIDIA add-in board partners around the world. - HardwareLogic

HIS Radeon HD 3650 512MB IceQ Turbo Card Review

How the game has changed. Not only is ATI competing again, but its giving NVIDIA a serious run for the performance crown while also managing to price its product line one step ahead of the competition. If this trend keeps up, expect to hear a lot more from HIS and other ATI partners. Well there you have it, God's a gamer! But would he choose to smite thee with the Radeon HD 3650, even one that packs 512MB of GDDR3 memory? Far be it for us to speak for the almighty, but we will carry out his dirty work and find out if this second attempt with ATI's Radeon HD 3650 proves ready to part our sea of benchmarks.

Those familiar with HIS branded products will immediately recognize the familar IceQ Turbo heatsink, which makes this a two slot video card, albeit a short statured one. On top sit a pair of notches allowing the Radeon HD 3650 to run in CrossFireX configuration. Call us crazy, but the concept of running two budget video cards is akin to having a ménage à trois the Wal-mart greeter and that and the life long fry girl. A cheap date no doubt, but hardly worth bragging about. Of course, the Radeon HD 3650 is all about home theatre PC duties and comes with both ATI Avivo HD support and an unified video decoder to process Blu-ray.

Just like the last time we looked at ATI's Radeon HD 3650 video card, we continue to be impressed with what this architecture can do in the living room. Home theatre gurus will appreciate both ATI's Avivo HD and universal video decoder, which offloads high definition video processing to the GPU rather than taxing the processor. Unfortunately, all but the most casual gamers will be disappointed when trying to play a video game. Running a medium resolution with reduced video quality settings might be passable, but all bets are off as soon as you hit the higher screen resolutions or widescreen versions.

Despite the large 512MB frame buffer, the Radeon HD 3650 just isn't a capable gaming card, and moreover, the added memory made virtually no difference over the same card in 256MB trim. Even worse, the HIS Radeon HD 3650 IceQ Turbo streets for over $110 shipped before any applicable mail in rebates, which is nearly twice that of some the competition. Had this card been priced more conservatively, we'd be more lenient with the abysmal gaming performance. We can't see spending over $100 on strictly a home theatre card, particularly when that's more than some equally capable motherboards with onboard video.

While we appreciate the inclusion of an Arctic Cooling designed cooler, we don't feel the cooler is worth paying a premium, particularly with the low power draw to begin with. Other Radeon HD 3650 video cards can be had for much less, and all of them deliver sub-par gaming performance. Of course, you don't shop for budget GPU with gaming in mind, but even you're simply looking for an ultra cheap video card for strictly home theatre PC duties, you'd be better off investing in the Radeon HD 3450. Either way, we see no compelling reason to recommend the HIS Radeon HD 3650 512MB IceQ Turbo graphics card.