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ATI Radeon HD 3450  (Source: MadBoxPC)

ATI Radeon HD 3470  (Source: MadBoxPC)

ATI Radeon HD 3650  (Source: MadBoxPC)
Images of upcoming low priced ATI video cards leaked

Currently there is a significant performance gap between AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards in virtually all price ranges. AMD still has many loyal followers even if it doesn’t offer the best performance available.

According to MadBoxPC, AMD has a trio of graphics cards slated for launch in January. These cards are the Radeon 3450 HD using the RV620 core with a 55nm fabrication process. The core clock will be 525MHz, the memory clock is 800MHz, and the card will use 256MB of DDR2 RAM. Outputs on the 3450 include VGA and DisplayPort and the card is PCI Express 2.0 compliant. The price is expected to be only $50 USD.

The next card is the Radeon 3470 HD, which also uses the RV620 core and is built using a 55nm process. The core clock is around 600MHz with a memory clock of 1000MHz. The cards memory will include 256MB to 512MB of GDDR3. Outputs include TV-Out, VGA, and DVI-I. The card is PCI Express 2.0 compliant as well. The price for the card is expected to be $60 USD.

The final card is the Radeon 3650 HD built on the RV635 core. Two versions of this card are going to be available. The XT version will have a core clock of 800MHz and a memory clock of 1000MHz. The Pro version will have a 600 MHz core speed and the same memory clock. Both versions will have 256MB to 512MB of GDDR3 with a 128-bit memory interface. This card is expected to retail for around $100 USD.

DailyTech first reported on the RV620 and RV635 graphics cores earlier this month.

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Wow
By FITCamaro on 12/21/2007 2:14:37 PM , Rating: 3
Depending on its performance, the 3650XT could be the ultimate mid-range card. At that price its cheaper than even many 2600 cards and 8500GT cards. Definitely cheaper than the 8600GT.




RE: Wow
By ChronoReverse on 12/21/2007 2:22:40 PM , Rating: 5
Pricing-wise isn't it quite a bit below mid-ranged?

The 3850 is squarely a mid-ranged card though (and quite good)


RE: Wow
By TMV192 on 12/21/2007 2:27:13 PM , Rating: 2
well nothing is written in stone but the way I've see it there's 4 categories; entry-level, mainstream, performance, and high-end. It's hard though to put the price limits on them because of cards like the HD 3850 being both fast and affordable, so where performance was like $220 when the X1950Pro launched, it's now $170 with the HD 3850.


RE: Wow
By ChronoReverse on 12/21/2007 2:54:51 PM , Rating: 3
Before the x1950Pro there was the 7600GT which was the definition of mid-range. I'd say the 3650 has taken up that mantle completely.


RE: Wow
By GhandiInstinct on 12/21/2007 3:39:13 PM , Rating: 2
So can I replace my 1950Pro for a 3650 or 3850? It's VGA.


RE: Wow
By ChronoReverse on 12/21/2007 4:59:01 PM , Rating: 2
Do you mean AGP? These cards are PCI-E.


RE: Wow
By StevoLincolnite on 12/22/2007 3:43:01 AM , Rating: 2
If you wish to go Direct X 10 and keep you're AGP there is always the 2600 series...
Personally I just upgraded the old box from a Radeon 9550, to a Radeon x850xt for next to nothing which, going by benchmarks out performs the 2600 series, And now I'm playing Crysis at medium quality settings.


RE: Wow
By Griswold on 12/22/2007 3:57:33 AM , Rating: 3
I would stay away from any of these HD series cards with AGP. I've read AMD treats AGP support in their latest drivers like a red haired stepchild. Its time to shell out some bucks for a new mobo with PCIe.


RE: Wow
By murphyslabrat on 12/22/2007 12:51:57 PM , Rating: 2
Furthermore, with how AGP cards get priced, a new DDR1 mobo with PCI-e would cost only a little bit more...unless you have an ultra-grade mobo, in which case you probably can afford a brand new system.


RE: Wow
By StevoLincolnite on 12/23/2007 4:38:12 AM , Rating: 2
"It would cost a little bit more"
That money saved by not buying the mobo could be used by adding more memory, or a better heatsink/fan for over clocking.


RE: Wow
By Ryanman on 12/22/2007 5:44:03 PM , Rating: 1
Lol the 9550 was an awesome card in meh humble opinion. I upped from taht on a HP, to a brand new system with a x1900xt thrown in for a mere 2300 dollars. The difference was amazing. To be honest man, I would not have spent more than 20 bucks on an x800, not because it's a terrible card but because compatibility wise it's going to eb struggling.


RE: Wow
By StevoLincolnite on 12/23/2007 4:41:34 AM , Rating: 2
I spent 120 bucks on it, But thats AU not US currency things "Seem" more expensive here.

And compatability? It can run every game out at the moment.
Including the SM3 only Bioshock. (Look for ShaderShock to get it to run).


RE: Wow
By Martimus on 12/22/2007 2:28:49 PM , Rating: 2
They ship with an adapter to convert the DVI to VGA. I have been using it since I bought the X800XL, and now my HD 3850. Both came with a pair of DVI to VGA adapters.


RE: Wow
By coldpower27 on 12/21/2007 5:08:10 PM , Rating: 2
X1950 Pro is probably defined as performance, as it was 3/4 core wise of the high end core of the time.

It was like this:

entry Radeon X12-X16 Series
mid range Radeon X1650 XT
performance Radeon X1950 Pro
Enthusiast Radeon X1950 XT or higher

but it is sometimes hard as there is sometimes blurinng between the lines.

Like the X1950 XT 256 would be transitionary card between the performance to enthusiast, just like the 7950 GT.

entry 7300 Series
mid range 7600 Series
performance 7900 GS
Enthusiast 7950 GT or higher.


RE: Wow
By Vanilla Thunder on 12/21/2007 5:14:25 PM , Rating: 2
I paid $99.00 for my OC'd 7900GS. I would consider it more than midrange card. Maybe not as much anymore, but it still gets the job done pretty well for a card that cost me under a hundo.

Vanilla


RE: Wow
By imperator3733 on 12/22/2007 6:53:11 PM , Rating: 2
I put the price limits as <$100 for budget/entry-level, $100-200 for mainstream, $200-$350 for performance, and >$350 for enthusiast/high-end. I categorize products based on the price of a product, not the performance. These recent launches are mostly in the performance range, even though they have enthusiast/high-end level performance.


RE: Wow
By Samus on 12/27/2007 12:11:26 AM , Rating: 2
right, i always see it as:

low end = <$100
mid range = $101-$200
high end = $201-$300

Basically I could never justify spending more than $300 on a videocard, mostly because it would be more than double the price of the next most expensive component in my entire computer ;)


High-end
By dagamer34 on 12/21/2007 9:29:10 PM , Rating: 2
When is AMD going to compete in the high-end market again? =/




RE: High-end
By darkpaw on 12/21/2007 11:52:44 PM , Rating: 3
I'm not an AMD fan, so I'm not defending them, but there really are very few people that care about the super high end video card market.

The number of people that buy $300+ video cards is very very tiny over all. Personally, I'm very glad that Nvidia and AMD both have once again become competitive in the $200-300 range, which is the high end for the vast majority of gamers/enthusiasts.

It would be nice for the few people that do buy high end cards if AMD was competitive in that market, but it might just not be financially worthwhile for them at this time (especially if competing would mean a complete revamp earlier then necessary).


RE: High-end
By StevoLincolnite on 12/22/2007 3:54:12 AM , Rating: 4
I would like Mid/High-end AGP cards available, the 2600 series is really the fastest Direct X 10 cad available in AGP, otherwise for the best performance you have the next option which is the x1950/x1900 series.
I have a motherboard which has AGP, And an Athlon 64 X2 5800+
Where is my 8800 in AGP?
I would rather not have to Upgrade the board just to get PCI-E, and well all know that the PCI-E vs AGP is not all that great, the only advantage is that in benchmarks PCI-E is slightly faster and you can run it in SLI.

Even then, AGP 16x was available in Some of the Geforce 6 on-board solutions.


RE: High-end
By clovell on 12/22/2007 1:02:50 PM , Rating: 2
Good points, but odds are that if your board doesn't have a PCIe 16x slot, slapping an 8800 in your rig won't do much, as your cpu will probably bottleneck you - you're an exception to that rule.

There's been two gens of overlap between PCIe and AGP in video cards, I guess ATi and Nvidia decided that was enough.


RE: High-end
By StevoLincolnite on 12/23/2007 4:36:02 AM , Rating: 2
Well I wouldn't call the x800/x700/x600/x300 and Geforce 6 a generation of PCI-E based cards, the Bridge chip limited the cards to AGP 8x speeds even while using the PCI-E interface.

What about all the AGP socket 939 users?
Some boards have an "Upgrade Slot" so they can use Socket AM2 processors, which is a good upgrade path, with the exception of the AGP slot of course.

I know someone with an Athlon XP 2500+ and a Radeon x1950XT AGP, The processor is still a bottleneck, but the other weird thing is he gets playable FPS at any setting in oblivion without any decrease or increase in performance.

Some games may be more processor hungry than others, thats when you see processor performance effect the GPU more.

A guy on the OldOblivion forums managed to get crysis running at 20-25fps on a Pentium 3 Coppermine 1ghz, 512mb of ram and a Radeon 9600, although the settings were on low, and he tweaked the drivers and operating system to the max as well as edit the game's config file it just shows how well games are scalable.


RE: High-end
By grooves on 12/28/2007 8:34:53 PM , Rating: 2
woah that's pretty cool as I have the exact same specs on the rig that I'm posting on now... I'm guessing he's running THE Coppermine mobo, CUSL2 - and if his 9600 is of the XT variation then I better check this out!


RE: High-end
By mWMA on 12/22/2007 3:17:08 PM , Rating: 1
Actually you are wrong about the mid-range.
Economy cost < below 70.
Value cost 70 - 125
Mainstream should cost 150 - 250
High should be 300-whatever the idiots with money to waste buyers are willing to pay.

ATI and nVidia (especially nVidia) have been increasing the cost of mid or mainstream. I still remember the day when 9500-9700 came and 9500 was considered mid until 9800 showed up.

Only now is nVidia releasing cards in real mid price bracket but the supply and demand has caused the price of these to increase significant enough. 280+ for most 8800GT and only few places are selling them very quickly at the actual price nVidia promised which should be less than 200 which hopefully will happen sometime next year when the next high end card comes out.

I glad the AMD is pushing their prices down even if they don't have the highend yet ...hopefully they soon will so we can get nVidia to start getting more supply out the door and lower the cost.


RE: High-end
By overzealot on 12/22/2007 5:14:46 AM , Rating: 2
3870 crossfire performance is often better than gtx/ultra, so when the 3870 CF card comes out you *could* consider them being in the high-end market again.
We'll probably see nvidia do the same thing with the GT though, to be able to hold onto the performance crown.


RE: High-end
By just4U on 12/22/2007 12:38:48 PM , Rating: 2
Not really, the 3850/70 and the 8800GT are squarely aimed at the mid range user. Both Nviida and ATI have yet to release their new High end parts.

The killer thing about it all is those mid ranges out perform (and made obsolete) previous higher end parts... Unlike the 8600/2600 variants we saw this summer.

Both companies did really well to release these parts around the time they did. It's a big boost for many who hadn't taken the leap to the 8800gts/gtx/ultra. Probably suprised many as well since they outperform or are on par with the old gts in most instances.


XT??? Pro???
By Spivonious on 12/21/2007 2:28:05 PM , Rating: 3
I thought they were getting rid of those stupid suffixes. Why isn't there a 3650 and 3670?

On a sidenote, does anyone think there will be a 3890, or a 3950/70?




RE: XT??? Pro???
By retrospooty on 12/21/2007 2:32:51 PM , Rating: 4
they are dropping the "pro" and "XT" suffix.

3x50 = pro
3x70 = XT


RE: XT??? Pro???
By cochy on 12/21/2007 2:47:25 PM , Rating: 5
That not really how the article is explaining it.

It says two versions of the 3650, PRO and XT.

I don't know who to believe!!


RE: XT??? Pro???
By bryanW1995 on 12/21/2007 9:20:29 PM , Rating: 3
they aren't using pro and xt monikers any more. the article was written by somebody who is just casually interested in graphics cards, or he was at least too lazy to read up a little bit more before posting his article.


RE: XT??? Pro???
By Tim Thorpe on 12/22/2007 1:28:10 AM , Rating: 2
I would go with the official word from AMD, these are leaked products and was probably something wolfgang overlooked when he wrote the article, either that or they are phasing it out with their next generation of cards and we are stuck with the convention for a little longer.


HDMI???
By RogueLegend on 12/22/2007 8:38:34 PM , Rating: 2
I see DisplayPort, I see DVI, and I see VGA, but I don't see HDMI.

Are we still going to be using an HDMI converter for these cards, or is HDMI disappearing from conventional graphics chipsets?




RE: HDMI???
By Bluestealth on 12/23/2007 12:57:15 AM , Rating: 2
Apparently there will be Display Port to DVI/HDMI adapters... which if true makes the idea for this port more and more sane... The more I read about Display Port the less I worry...


RE: HDMI???
By BillyBatson on 12/24/2007 3:14:22 AM , Rating: 2
display port doesn't offer anything that hdmi doesn't it is just supposed to be a cheaper alternative to hdmi since licensing is supposed to be cheaper. I personally would rather pay more for HDMI than have 2 different standards, HDMI for TV's and display port for computer screens


RE: HDMI???
By cochy on 12/24/2007 10:50:10 AM , Rating: 2
DisplayPort requires less electronics than HDMI so panels can be made thinner.


RE: HDMI???
By Bluestealth on 12/24/2007 9:38:39 PM , Rating: 3
There is no licensing fee associated with using Display Port, and the port itself is low cost. It also apparently will support analog output via a dongle something that HDMI cannot do.

IMHO Display Port is a cheaper, better solution for computers.


huh?
By bryanW1995 on 12/21/2007 9:17:41 PM , Rating: 5
Currently there is a significant performance gap between AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards in virtually all price ranges. AMD still has many loyal followers even if it doesn’t offer the best performance available.

WHAT? hmmmm, let's see, the 3850 absolutely destroys anything from nvidia that has a similar price. the 3870 is priced competitively with the 8800gt 256, with a very slightly higher price and also a small performance improvement. what other cards besides 8800gt and 38x0 matter right now? obviously both camps are putting their newer cores into the lower-end cards asap, but nvidia's only CLEAR advantage is in the high-end. Do your research before throwing out crap that people will believe simply because they saw it on anandtech.




RE: huh?
By feelingshorter on 12/23/2007 10:30:12 PM , Rating: 2
I used to write for my local high school newspaper and whenever we had an opinion, we would only write it in the columns section. I find it weird that dailytech is mixing news/opinion. Anandtech, can have an opinion, especially when they do tons of research and actual benchmark.

Maybe there is evidence to support one view or the other but even in a highschool newspaper, people would always come up to me and complain a lot (worse than the internet equivalent of flaming online) if i just so sightly swayed one way or the other in a "news" piece.

I never take any "news" for fact anyways unless i looked at multiple sources. Every single newspaper I know has a "correction" section to fix mistakes written in preview editions.

As for the 3850 "destroys anything from nvidia".....I don't think it will offer a better price value than the 8800GT 256 . I looked at the benchmarks and the 8800gt wins all across the board. There's also only one card on newegg.com from leadtek, so give it awhile for the market to cool down and more brands to come. The price will be just as competitive as the 3850. In the long run, the 8800gt is the better choice once nvidia gets their supply issues down


Wonder if they'll work for HD
By djc208 on 12/21/2007 2:24:13 PM , Rating: 2
Wonder if these low end cards will actually be able to do a good job with HD video playback from either of the DVD formats. I was kind of disappointed when Anandtech reviewed them and said that the older 2400/8400 didn't do a clean job with HD-DVD/Blueray playback, that's one of the few reasons most people would go for these lower end cards over an even cheaper and older $25~30 card.




RE: Wonder if they'll work for HD
By FITCamaro on 12/21/2007 2:39:44 PM , Rating: 2
Yes but the lower 2600/8600 variants weren't much more and were perfectly capable.


By ChronoReverse on 12/21/2007 2:56:10 PM , Rating: 2
Don't they have a separate UVD chip? The core speed itself hopefully won't matter.


HTPC
By fri2219 on 12/21/2007 5:43:44 PM , Rating: 2
If the 3450 comes in a passive variant, it looks like a winner for HTPC.

I look forward to a replacement for my MSI 7300GS which was sold as being HDCP ready (and wasn't. Can you say fraud? Sure you can, I knew that you could.), came with a bent bracket, and has a heat sink that takes up 2.5 slot spaces to the left of the card.




RE: HTPC
By ajfink on 12/22/2007 12:56:14 AM , Rating: 2
I may be nabbing a 3450 for my parents' slim PC. This makes me torn between an 8400GS and one of these, though the 8400GS will probably still outperform it. I'm really more interested in power consumption.


RE: HTPC
By bfellow on 12/26/2007 4:38:10 PM , Rating: 2
Personally at that low-end power consumption and performance will be low for both. I would just pick the lowest price between 3450 and 8400GS


XT and PRO names again?!
By Pino on 12/21/2007 2:30:57 PM , Rating: 3
I tought ATI was droping this suffixies in ther naming scheme.




RE: XT and PRO names again?!
By Griswold on 12/22/2007 4:02:28 AM , Rating: 2
They did. This article is nothing that can be considered official.


Not True
By Butterbean on 12/21/2007 5:04:20 PM , Rating: 5
"Currently there is a significant performance gap between AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards in virtually all price ranges"

That's not true at all. Go to the listed $100-200 range EVGA cards at Newegg and find the one thats better than the 3850 for $170. It's not even close. As someone who just bought a XFX 8800GT and spent 2 weeks looking in to this I feel sorry when I read this stuff because I get apprehensive about all the other reviews I read here. Anandtech really dislikes ATI looking at this and other things I read so I can't believe anything ATI I see here - maybe other stuff too.




performance?
By fic2 on 12/21/2007 6:01:30 PM , Rating: 2
Anybody know where the 3470 would come in versus an X1650?

(as you can tell I am not a hard core gamer, but if I would sell my x1650 for about what I would buy a 3470 for I might go for it - especially if there has a fanless version)




RE: performance?
By coldpower27 on 12/22/2007 1:01:19 AM , Rating: 3
X1650 Pro or XT there is a significant difference, X1650 Pro is just a glorified X1600 XT which was barely competitive with the 7600 GS if I recall. The X1650 XT is competitive with the 7600 GT.

If the HD 3470 is just a HD 2400 Series based on the 55nm process with PCI-E 2.0 then performance is going to be pretty dismal overall X1650 Pro is quite a bit faster with the X1650 XT being MUCH faster.

The HD 2400 XT and that is clocked at 700MHZ is only barely competitive with the 7300 GT, faster then the GT in newer games with the 7300 GT doing much better in older games, overall fairly even all things considered.

The HD 3470 is coming in at 600MHZ so it's going to be slower then the HD 2400 XT it's replacing.


Great for budget/CAG
By zero2dash on 12/27/2007 11:36:15 AM , Rating: 2
Great news for me, in need of a sub-$125 card for a new build right after new years (tax refund time! woohoo!).

Was going to get an XFX 8600GT XXX for $97 after rebate...I'll definitely look at the HD 3650 and if it beats the 8600GT which in all likelihood will happen...I'll grab one of those for $100.

Good news for budget minded shoppers indeed.




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