The crisis that hit the world economy has major influence at IT industry. NVIDIA announced losses in range from 40-50% compared to previous quarter and lot of other companies are firing employees as response on the incoming troubles. Nevertheless there are companies that are not influenced too much by all this and one of them is ATI. Since the launch of their Radeon HD 4800 series, ATI managed not only to regain its feet, but also to kick back and since that moment ATI didn't make a bad move what so ever. Last two moves were price drops on the Radeon HD 4870 as reaction towards NVIDIA models and replacement of the Radeon HD 3850 models, to regain some more market share. - InsideHW

Biostar Radeon HD 4650 256MB Board Edition Review

Soon we can expect to find the Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards with a price tag of around $99, so we decided to test one interesting model that is signed by Biostar that can be even more interesting than some Radeon HD 4870 models. First contact with packaging of the Biostar Radeon HD 4650 256MB card is not something that you will remember in the future as pleasant. Inside the box you will find accessories that can be described as spartan but this attribute can be, in this case considered as somehow generous. Believe it or not, but beside a CD with drivers we didn't find anything else in the box besides graphics card itself.

The graphics card is excellent build and without doubt we can say that this is, so far the best Radeon HD 4650 that we had in our hands. The power section is one of the best that we saw so far, cooling solution is very efficient and it doesn't take up too much space. The fan on this graphics board is larger than fans that we used to see on similar graphics cards. Larger diameter of fan allowed Biostar to use fan with lower speed that resulted in very silent cooling solution. And ATI recommended manufacturers to use DDR2 memory on the Radeon HD 4650 video cards, but Biostar have used GDDR3 memory on this model.

Now to spice things up, Biostar used default frequency for GPU of 600MHz and slightly higher frequency for memory and runs at 1600MHz. Increase in frequency of the memory on this model from default 1000MHz to 1600MHz, resulting in increased memory bandwidth that the 128-bit memory bus will appreciate. To make things even better Biostar used 1.0ns rated memory that can be further overclocked at 2000MHz speed. If you already started to make plans for perfect CrossFire system based on these cards we must tell you that, as it is the case with most perfect plans, this also has few drawbacks.

First of all the Biostar Radeon HD 4650 256MB has a price tag that is very close to cheapest Radeon HD 4670 models. The Biostar Radeon HD 4650 can achieve performance levels of Radeon HD 4670 but only after it is massively overclocked. This doesn't change the fact that the Biostar Radeon HD 4650 is a very top quality product, but changes the fact that it is a not best buy product in its class at the moment. For a very similar price you can buy graphics cards that achieve the same performance levels without any overclocking. And as such it can be considered as a bit over priced for the actual value it is actually providing.

But all in all this is a great graphics card and if you plan some upgrade of your graphics subsystem and you found somewhere this card with a price tag similar to most Radeon HD 4650 models you should buy this card, or even cards if you have a motherboard that supports CrossFire.