AMD's Radeon HD 4000 series has been enticing users from top to bottom to part with their cash as the year has progressed, and so far we've checked plenty of Radeon HD 4800 series boards as well as taking a look at Sapphire's Radeon HD 4670 offering. Today, we drop to an even lower price point, with courtesy of Sapphire's Radeon HD 4650 video card. The board that complements its use of GDDR3 memory to tempt the casual gamers amongst you with an HDMI output physically available on the board to entice the home theater PC crowd. Now this would surely be a great multimedia solution for everyone with high definition functions. Does it succeed in either of these disciplines? - Elite Bastards

Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 HDMI Version Card Review

In essence, the RV730 architecture which powers the Radeon HD 4650 is a cut down version of the chipset which originally debuted in its RV770 form with the Radeon HD 4800 series of parts. And the RV730 carries all of the same basic functionality as its big brother really, such as DirectX 10.1 support and hardware tessellation unit. Into that transistor count, AMD have managed to pack the same basic amount of processing power as their previous generation high-end core, giving the Radeon HD 4670 a total of 320 stream processors to play with. The GPU isconnected to a 128-bit wide memory bus with distributed controller.

The Radeon HD 4650 features a fully functional RV730 chip sporting a reference core clock speed of 600MHz, while also featuring 512MB of GDDR3 memory in the case of the board we are looking today its clocked at 1400MHz. Generally speaking, Sapphire have stuck with AMD's reference Radeon HD 4650 design, employing the same small single slot cooling solution and utilising the standard clock speeds. Due to that small cooler, most of the memory modules on the board aren't actively cooled, although this isn't really a big deal for this level of card. These chips can easily handle the heat generated without any cooling.

As you'd expect, no external power is required for the Radeon HD 4650, with the PCI Express slot capable of handling this board's requirements. The PCB is also bereft of any CrossFire connectors, and thus limiting CrossFire connectivity to communication of data between GPU's over the PCI Express bus. While any Radeon HD 4600 series card can output HDMI via a DVI to HDMI adapter, having an HDMI port directly on the board will likely appeal to home theater PC builders in this instance. As is so often the case, Sapphire's box art features a girl with a big sword and a blatant disregard for health and safety laws.

With its small cooler and the vast majority of its memory modules not actively cooled, if we are honest we weren't expecting all that much from Sapphire's Radeon HD 4650 HDMI version in terms of overclocking potential. However, when it comes to stuff like this we are always delighted to be proved wrong, and Sapphire's offering today did a great job of landing an egg squarely on our face when it came to dashing our low expectations. We managed to reach a stable core clock speed of 790MHz with the memory overclocking fared equally well, reaching a final overclock of 1720MHz. Both being a nice boost as such.

Of course, this Radeon HD 4650 has no delusions of grandeur in performance terms, seating itself as no more than an interesting prospect for casual gamers, where to be honest it acquitted itself pretty well. Provided you aren't looking to game at high resolutions then Sapphire's Radeon HD 4650 can provide adequate frame rates even when in-game settings are cranked up to high levels in the latest hot titles. What made our particular sample even more intriguing from a gaming standpoint was the level of overclocking available to us, which ramped performance up a notch to bring it a little closer to Radeon HD 4670 levels.

Naturally, we can't guarantee the same potential overclocks on every board, but if our sample is a good indicator then there's plenty of headroom to squeeze more performance out of this particular part. Away from gaming, the inclusion of an HDMI output on this board gives it a clear feature of interest for home theater PC builders, although this is perhaps offset by the fact that any Radeon HD 4000 series board features this functionality with the correct adapter. Overall, the Radeon HD 4650 HDMI edition offers up a well balanced menu of performance and functionality for both casual gamers and home theater PC builders.

Now whether its features and design are right for you is of course an issue for personal consideration dependant on your own requirements, but if it fits what you want to do with your system and you're looking for a graphics board along these lines, it's hard to argue against this part from Sapphire.