ASUS AH3450/DI/512M Radeon HD 3450 512MB 64-bit DDR AGP 8X HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card

2 Responses to “ASUS AH3450/DI/512M Radeon HD 3450 512MB 64-bit DDR AGP 8X HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card”

1. Philip Ekema
   October 18, 2009 at 7:54 am

   Yes, I know as well as the next guy that you should look at a lot more than memory when buying a graphics card. I bought this card without really finding any reviews for it. A lot of cards come with more memory than the card’s processor can handle. They upgrade the memory (very inexpensive) and leave the slower processor.
   
   I am more and more convinced that this is the deal with this card. I know, there are many more factors to getting good graphics, (pixel shaders, etc.) and I think that this card is a little skimpy when it comes to performance, and especially with the specs that they think that no one will check.
   
   Runs my vista eye candy nicely, but other than that I don’t think I can notice much of a difference between this and my old 128mb card.
   
   Seriously people, look at more than the memory when buying a card.
   Rating: 3 / 5
2. J. Byers
   October 18, 2009 at 8:10 am

   This is an excellent card for a non-gamer.

   The above reviewer has it backwards. The GPU is underpowered for gaming. The memory is more than the GPU can likely utilize but there MAY be some applications that can utilize more than 256MB, especially if you have a dual-monitor setup.

   Other:
   
   - Great drop-in for motherboards with underpowered on-board graphics.
   
   - Not a modern gaming card though some games with low requirements, especially some older games may run fine.
   
   - Dedicated memory instead of sharing onboard RAM. Very useful if you are extremely limited in onboard RAM (freeing up 128MB out of 1024MB does help)
   
   - The UVD can decode AVC/H.264 and VC-1 1080p video (or lower). You likely need to install the free application “K-Lite” ([...]) and ensure DXVA is enabled. Very useful especially if your CPU was previously underpowered. Just watched Hellboy (1080p, MKV, AVC, DTS 6-channel). My X2-4800+ CPU used 65% of its cycles without DXVA enabled (no hardware graphics decoding) and 3% (THREE PERCENT) with it enabled. Vista or Windows 7 used 10% more on average for the Windows overhead but movies still didn’t go above 20%.
   
   - full Aero support
   
   - There is essentially NO noticeable difference between most modern graphics cards. Differences in the Windows interface performance are usually due to differences in the Hard Drive speeds or amount of RAM. A fast SSD and at least 2GB of RAM (with this card and probably any dual-core CPU) will provide the best experience for multi-tasking and the basic Windows experience.

   Conclusion:
   
   An awesome little card that is adequate for most non-gamers and can provide a nice boost in various ways for older computers.
   Rating: 5 / 5