Hd3850 vs hd4650

rosguntJun 15, 2009, 1:25 PM

I am looking at updating my video card and i am a little confused (been years since i had to think about building a computer and a little behind on specs and tech). I was looking at these 2 cards, and i see that the HD3850 w/512mb ( ranked 65) crushes the HD4650 w/1gb ( ranked 117)according to passmark benchmarks. both seem to be priced the same at newegg. my question would be, is the 4650 and updated version or just a terrible card. specs on computer
amd 3700+ clawhammer with 2gigs ram, nothing overclocked. current card is a 6600gt thanks for any info.

http://www.newegg.com/Produ...Item=N82E16814125281

http://www.newegg.com/Produ...Item=N82E16814102730

http://www.videocardbenchma...t/high_end_gpus.html

3 answers Last reply Jun 15, 2009

More about hd3850 hd4650

smonkynessJun 15, 2009, 2:37 PM

*Those above links do not work

I am currently learning about the same thing. (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-265844_15_0.html#t1952382) please help lol, you might be interested.

But, from what i have looked up about those two cards, the 3850 is deffinately the better. It's just with the 4000 series, there are fixed issues with Anti-Aliasing and Anistropic Filtering 'AA and AF'. The 4 series card should perform better with those settings on.

Having said that the 4600 series cards hav a 128bit memory path, as appose to the 3850 having 256-bit and the other 4800 series awsomeness.
I believe that 'pretty much' means any card with 256bit paths will do better at resolutions over about 1240x1024 (maybe quite a bit better)

The last thing would be that the 4000 series cards have heavily improved on power consumption. They are a lot easier on your system.
PogostickioJun 15, 2009, 2:52 PM

Hi. I'm also on an AGP platform and I replied to someone else asking a similar question to yourself. In the link below you'll find quite a bit of info from me (Pogostickio) regarding the fun i'm having even though I'm still AGP.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3138945#post3138945

Hope this helps.

Pogo

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HindesiteJun 15, 2009, 3:04 PM

Well the 1GB of RAM on the 4600 cards can be misleading. That GPU really doesn't benefit much at all from anything over 512MBs. Also, the 4650 is not equal to a 3850. A 4670 is actually a revamped 3850 that takes less power and runs cooler. In actuality, a 3870 would beat a 4670 pretty easily. That's not a big deal though as the 4600 series isn't ATI's performance line, that would be the 4800 series. The 4600s are for people in need of low power/small case/budget setups.

All of that said, I've personally used a 4670 and I think it's an absolutely fantastic card for the price. Here's one for less then $60 after mail-in rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121274

But if you are looking for a more powerful card and have an unused 6-pin PCI-E power cable on your power supply, this Radeon 4830 will give you even more bang for your buck at just $80 after mail-in rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102822

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