Even though the Radeon HD 3450 and HD 3650 have been supported through ATI’s Catalyst driver ever since version 8.1, review samples of the new cards have not been readily available until now. Officially, ATI released the new graphics chips of the 3000 series on January 23. Sapphire sent us the first cards to use the new graphics processors, namely their HD 3450 and HD 2650 OC cards. We pit the new arrivals against the older HD 2400 Pro and HD 2600 Pro models to see how they stack up.

Ever since the 2x00 series, ATI’s graphics chips have supported HD video encoding, unburdening the CPU and thus lowering CPU usage. When Power DVD is used to play back high-def content, a Core 2 Duo system equipped with a Radeon HD 2400, 2600, 3450 or 3650 should show a CPU load of between 20 and 30 percent. When the wrong playback software is used, CPU usage can quickly climb to over 60 percent. Similar problems can occur with older releases of Power DVD or OEM versions. As a rule, updating the player software to the current version should reduce CPU usage.

For buyers interested in building a HTPC (Home Theatre PC), noise output and power consumption will also be factors to consider. Although the production process was refined from 65 nm to 55 nm for the new models, they still draw slightly more power under Windows Vista than the previous generation. Sapphire’s HD 3450 uses only passive cooling, making it completely silent. Our HD 3650 sample, on the other hand, uses active air cooling, although silent cooling versions should also be possible in this performance segment.

MSI is providing a competitor to the new entries in the shape of a Geforce 8600 GT with a heavily overclocked shader unit. Despite being equipped with only 256 MB of video memory, this card places ahead of the HD 3650 in several benchmarks. Due to its lower price, it represents a less expensive alternative to the ATI card.