Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 Overclocked
We covered the underpinnings of the Radeon HD 3650 in our preview right over here. Summarising in one sentence, ATI's newest Radeons were based on the same 120-stream-processing architecture as the outgoing HD 2000-series but added in a slew of new features, including PCIe 2.0 support; DisplayPort connectivity; a more power-efficient 55nm manufacturing process, and compliance with the Vista-only DX10.1 API in SP1
Given a practically identical architecture as the HD 2600, as far as pure gaming performance is concerned, the Radeon HD 3650 - equipped with 725MHz engine and shader clocks and 1,600MHz GDDR3 memory - will perform at roughly the same levels as the Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR3 (800e, 1,600m)
Sapphire is launching an overclocked-out-of-the-box Radeon HD 3650 model that ships with a standard-looking cooler. Clocked in at 800MHz core and 1,800MHz memory, it should provide a >10 per cent performance boost over the reference card.
The cooler, whilst small, does a good enough job at cooling the 378M-transistor core to be quiet enough not to hear over regular system noise. Sure, it's not the quietest around when chugging along under gaming duress, but does the job well enough.
It's clear that ATI was conservative when setting the clocks for the SKU, so has left it to its range of partners to dabble with pre-overclocking.
The cooler, being the same height of the card, doesn't impact on any others cards that you may put adjacent to it. The small-ish size makes it fine for use in larger HTPCs, and Sapphire retails half-height cards with its lower-power Radeon HD 3400 SKUs.
Sapphire has outfitted the card with 512MiB of GDDR3; double the reference amount. This makes implicit sense when factoring in the performance benefits of a larger frame-buffer and just how cheap GDDR3 currently is. The memory is fed through a 128-bit bus.
The card's power requirement is frugal enough to be covered by the 75W offered by the PCIe slot.
Now, manufacturers can differentiate their cards by carrying an eclectic range of outputs. The Radeon HD 3650 SKU offers built-in support for DisplayPort connectivity. Sapphire has opted for the tried-and-trusted twin dual-link DVI, which also act as passthroughs for routing on-board audio, should you wish.
