Radeon 3650 Replacement

Hey guys, it's been a really long time... I don't know much about what's out there these days. I'm looking to "upgrade" my video card, but I don't want to read for hours and hours on what the good stuff is these days.

I'm looking for something cheap, like $60. I currently have the a Sapphire Radeon 3650, and I love it. It's a really quality made card, extremely reliable, and that's what I care about. Heatsink size doesn't matter, I'll put heatsinks all over it.

#1 Concern = POWER CONSUMPTION. I'm poor these days, and leave the system on a lot. I ditched my 4870 because it was eating up power like crazy. I need this card to be about the same in power consumption, and if it required less power at idle, it'd be great!

The best upgrade would be about $60 or $75 bucks, and perform maybe 15% better... Give me DX11, and take a little less power at idle, load I don't care about at all since 95% of the time it's at idle. A quality card would be nice, I hate seeing super cheap components.

Must have 2x DVI, but HDMI to DVI adapters are ok, just not VGA. And must be ATI.

So what's the good card these days?

THANKS!

There aren't many cards that support DX11 for that price. If you want something that's low power consumption, I would look at the HD 4550. It is meant for HTPC setups and is passively cooled. I used to have one before upgrading to a 5770 and it is quite a decent card, and you can get one for around $50 or even less. I was even able to play some games with it. Also, I would also look into the 5600 series cards. They support DX11, but also consume more power and have active cooling.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102870 Heres a 5670 for $70. If you can spend the extra for a 5750 which is about $110 and you'll get almost double the performance of one 5670. It uses less power than a 3650 at 65 watts max and 15 watts at idle. Performance should be probably around 200-350% then what you are currently using as your card.

Thanks a lot for the help! That's exactly the advice I was looking for. I'm really glad to see the lower idle power consumption!

Not sure on the 5750 or 5770 yet, I'll probably just get whichever I can find a deal on.

Thanks again!!

Foxie3a said:

Thanks a lot for the help! That's exactly the advice I was looking for. I'm really glad to see the lower idle power consumption!

Not sure on the 5750 or 5770 yet, I'll probably just get whichever I can find a deal on.

Thanks again!!

Click to expand...

Just to note a 5750 doesn't require a PCI-E power cable to connect to the card to provide additional juice while a 5770 does, so the power consumption does go up a bit. If memory serves correctly though it only consumes about 20 watts more than the 5750 under load and just a few more watts when idle.

I'd go with the 5750 if it's idle that much, but that's not in your price range.