AMD's entry-level ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics card is an amazing deal for those looking to juice up their PC's video-playback performance and quality. For just $49, you get support for HD video playback, high desktop resolutions, power enough to display all the bells and whistles of Windows Vista's Aero interface, and the ability to add additional cards to support more monitors. But while it supports the latest DirectX 10.1 (DX10.1) 3D features, the Radeon HD 3450 is decidedly not the card for you if you play games.
Our sample card was a half-height, fanless PCI Express model with 256MB of DDR2 memory, intended for low-profile home theater cases. The card has only a single DVI port, as well as a component-video/S-Video connector and a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) adapter for the DVI port. ATI also has a model available with both DVI and VGA ports, as well as one with a VGA port and the new DisplayPort connector.
Though this is an inexpensive, entry-level card, the HD 3450 has the power to handle all of Vista's graphics effects, including desktop transparency, Flip 3D task switching, and the full suite of slide-show effects. That makes it a good replacement for entry-level PC graphics, such as the integrated graphics chips found on many motherboards, which are fast enough to enable basic effects such as transparency but disable more-sophisticated effects such as slide-show transitions.
While its desktop performance was excellent, the HD 3450's gaming performance was dismal. It delivered slide-show-like frame rates of 11 frames per second (fps) in F.E.A.R. and 4.6fps in Company of Heroes (both at a resolution of 1,280x1,024). If you have a nostalgic bent, the card has enough power to handle 3D games from early in the decade at low resolutions, but its support of the DX10.1 standard used by the newest games is mostly there as a checkbox item for the promotional text on the card's box. Casual gamers should consider the Radeon HD 3650 as the bare minimum, with the HD 3850 a more suitable entry-level card for serious gamers.
For the card's home-theater-PC target audience, though, the HD 3450 delivers. Its lack of a fan offers silent operation, and its video-playback performance and visual quality are top-notch. Despite its low price, the card offered flawless playback of 1080p HD content on a 1,900x1,200 24-inch monitor. It supports ATI Avivo HD video, with hardware decoding of MPEG and DivX, as well as the H.264 and VC-1 video codecs used on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. This makes for a sharp, clear picture with smooth frame rates, even at high resolutions, without requiring a PC with a high-end CPU to decode the video. The HD 3000 series cards improve on the hardware decoder introduced in the HD 2000 series by reducing CPU utilization and increasing memory bandwidth to smooth playback at the highest resolutions. With the HDMI adapter and High-Bandwith Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support, the HD 3450 will handle even copyright-protected HD video.
If you're looking for better 3D-gaming performance, plan on spending more than the Radeon HD 3450's bargain price. But if you just want a graphics card that delivers good performance on the Windows desktop and excellent video-playback performance and quality, this card is hard to beat.
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Direct Price: $49
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