Conclusion:

We're quite happy to see ATI pushing forward after some rough times in 2007 and the move to a 55nm manufacturing process has solved many of the issues with the previous generation of ATI cards. Looking at our benchmarks Sapphire's 3650 OC shows it is more than capable of playing even today's games at good detail settings and doesn't consume very much power. The Radeon HD 3450 is a little bit rougher and would definitely be geared towards the games of year's pasts or office use rather than something formidable for today's games. You're going to have to turn settings down to their lowest to attempt to play most games coming out now and if you that's your interest you're probably better off saving a little more cash for a higher-end card. That said the UVD feature of the 3450 makes it very suitable for a HTPC to offload CPU cycles in decoding HD video while providing excellent desktop performance and able to play the game's at yesterday at acceptable levels and a few recent games if you turn down the settings. At $50 it's a great bargain for an HTPC.

Sapphire's Radeon HD 3650 Overclocked though is more than capable of playing today's games bringing in some excellent numbers with the latest technology and more able to play Crysis at good frames per second on "Medium" detail settings. Couple this with UVD, low noise and power consumption and for the sub-$100 market it is a great card. Currently you can pick one up for around $87 from Newegg. This does put slightly over the cheapest GeForce 8600 GTS on the market at around $80 but when you factor in power consumption we believe the 3650 is the better choice with the slight difference in performance.

Overall we believe Sapphire have done a good job with both cards and we look forward to seeing what might lie ahead in their future. Although we would like to see the cards possibly slightly cheaper they do present a good bargain and Sapphire's normal Radeon HD 3650 fits a good middle ground at $65 in between the two. Not bad for a card that can play Crysis.

Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 Score: 90%

Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 Overclocked Score: 94%