Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 512MiB
Sapphire also uses a passive heatsink on its Radeon HD 3450 but doesn't bother with a smaller PCB.
And it sticks to reference specifications with the core at an HIS-matching 594MHz but memory at 990MHz, meaning fewer memory-bandwidth limitations for the GPU.
The heatsink does concurrently cool the memory chips on this model, and, also unlike the HIS, the core frequency is reduced to half when in 2D mode.
Sapphire understands that bigger numbers still sell boxes. Leveraging the current low pricing on DDR2 RAM, Sapphire has added a total of 512MiB to this card.
The question is, we suppose, whether the guts of the card can utilise the larger framebuffer. Historically, placing larger on-card caches, however cheap, has done little to increase budget GPUs' performance.
ATI morphed what amounted to a discrete Radeon HD 2400-class GPU in to its 780G chipset, and a Radeon HD 3450 can be paired up with the IGP to offer Hybrid graphics, utilising the power of both GPUs and providing in the region of 20 per cent extra performance than a discrete card alone.
NVIDIA has yet to ship its hybrid solution, though.
Bucking the trend, a couple of HDCP-enabled dual-link DVI ports are located on the back. We prefer this arrangement due to the pervasiveness of LCD monitors, and driving two from a £30 card makes sense.
Summary
Sapphire's Radeon HD 3450, priced at £30, ships with faster memory clocks than the HIS card. The extra framebuffer, whilst looking good on paper, is of dubious benefit for what is a strictly low-end card.
