Product Listing

MSI R3650-T2D512-OC (Radeon HD 3650 512MB)

By Vincent Chang - 11 Mar 2008

Temperature Testing & Power Consumption

Temperature Testing

With the advantage of a die shrink and a lesser transistor count due to core optimizations, the temperatures were firmly in favor of the MSI Radeon HD 3650 compared to the Radeon HD 2600 XT. The memory and rear components were not too different among the two but the core had the most improvement. However, this improvement only put the MSI Radeon HD 3650 on par with the GeForce 8600 cards and perhaps is a key reason why ATI needed this refresh for other reasons than trying to increase performance.

Power Consumption

With a smaller die and ATI's PowerPlay feature, the MSI Radeon HD 3650 got the lowest power consumption numbers in our test, be it at idle or peak. If one compared it to the Radeon HD 2600 XT, the largest drop occurred during idle, which showed the efficacy of PowerPlay. The fact that the Radeon HD 3850 was only 1W more at idle is another endorsement for the power savings technology at work.

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