Sapphire’s Radeon HD 3650 is at least twice as well equipped as the HD 3450 and almost three times as fast. Since ATI is fully aware of this fact, the card is also three times as expensive. On the other hand, the additional equipment that comes with the card does its part to neutralize the extra cost. The bundle consists of a CrossFire bridge, a DVI-HDMI adapter, the synthetic benchmark 3DMark06, Power DVD 7 6ch (OEM), and Cyberlink’s DVD Suite comprising video-editing, burning and printing modules. UVD is also implemented in this graphics chip, allowing it to decode HD content and lowering CPU usage. Now, if the card used a passive cooling solution, we would recommend it without reservations for use in an HTPC with casual gaming ambitions.

The active fan is happily very quiet in 2D mode and also allows Sapphire to run this card at higher clock speeds. Our review sample is an OC Edition whose GPU is clocked at 800 MHz and the video memory at 900 MHz. For reference, the standard clock speeds of an HD 3650 are 725 and 800 MHz respectively. Thanks to its improved clock speeds and its 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, Sapphire’s HD 3650 is almost 26 percent faster than its predecessor using the Radeon HD 2600 Pro (GPU 600 MHz, 256 MB video memory at 700 MHz).

Even the Radeon HD 3650 is not really powerful enough for the combination of DirectX 10 effects and high resolutions. BlackSite Area 51 does not run smoothly, so your best options are either to reduce the resolution or revert to DirectX 9 (DX9). Games based on the Unreal Tournament 3 engine will only run at smooth frame rates if you can turn the shadow and texture quality all the way down. Call of Duty 4 is playable at high resolutions providing you don’t enable FSAA. Crysis runs too slowly when set to Medium quality, but the Low setting should work well enough. At lower resolutions, Half Life 2 Episode 2 I playable even with FSAA enabled. If you can do without edge smoothing, the card will also let you play the game smoothly at higher resolutions.

Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X will run at full Ultra quality in DX10 mode. If you wish to use FSAA, you’ll need to reduce the graphics quality a little. World in Conflict runs much better on this card, and the HD 3650 makes it very clear that it is more powerful than its little sibling. Nonetheless, you’ll still have to reduce the graphics quality, which means the game will automatically switch to DX9 mode. Probably, the game will only become completely smooth at Medium quality with FSAA disabled. As with the HD 3450, it is doubtful whether the HD 3650 will have enough 3D power to cope with future DX 10.1 effects.