A good budget graphics card (Asus EAH3650 TOP/HTDI)

Member Name: fazste

Product:	Asus EAH3650 TOP/HTDI
Date:	25/01/09 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap and reliable- Asus are a good brand.

Disadvantages: Will struggle with higher spec games

I recently upgraded my pc system and built another pc from scratch-(quad core,2gb ram system) my original intents were to leave the onboard graphics on and not worry too much about the graphics side of things. Seeing as i dont really play that much on the pc anymore i was quite content- until my brother wanted to play the insurgency half life mod! i was hooked again! and to be honest i knew the onboard chip wouldn't cope but it was fun watching it stutter. Half life mods are not overly demanding so after a quick comparison on spec and prices i went for this little card- i'm not disappointed. I wont go into spec's etc as you can look that up yourself but i wil say that if you're after a cheapo good performing card then this is a good buy. Installation was quick and easy with the control centre and drivers installing no problem, upon reboot i disabled the onboard gfx and was greeted with a lot crisper image-the card's fan is quiet aswell. The catalyst control centre now seems to work with no problems and i enabled several features (2x aa/ af etc') and kept the monitor resolution to 1280x720. The game itself ran with no discernible problems, perhaps just the odd stutter but i think that was either texture caching or server lag! with a few minor adjustments to the graphics options it ran smoothly. As said, im not a big gamer on pc but i should imagine that with newer games you would have to lower graphics settings to some degree, but i dont think to the extent that the game will look ugly. This seems like a good capable card and perhaps in the right hand's (overclockers etc') will perform even better. A good all round budget card.

Summary: A good cheap gfx card- great for the casual gamer.

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