Having the need to replace my existing PCI Express video card, I happened to see the HD 4650 on Amazon. The price was very attractive for the good features that this card offered; in other stores the same video card was priced about ten to twenty dollars more. The HD 4650 supports DirectX 10.1 and it supports HD playback. The card also has 512MB of on board video memory; some other models have 1GB.
The main thing that I was looking for in a video card was that it needed to be a 1/2 length video card that could fit in my custom built system; the interior of my computer chassis is designed a certain way where I can only install half length video cards. My system is configured with an ASUS motherboard, an AMD 64bit Athlon 3700+ 2.22GHz processor, and 2GB of RAM; pretty slow specs compared to the faster configurations in the market. I also did not want to spend the extra money to upgrade all of the main components in my system just to get a speed increase. Instead, I just wanted to replace my existing video card. Before I installed the HD 4650 in my system, I experienced choppy Blu-Ray video playback; my old video card is a PCI-Express card that has 256MB of on board video memory and the card is around two years old. For Blu-Ray video playback, I'm also using an external USB 2.0 Serial ATA LG HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disc player; I'm sure I would see better playback results if I installed the LG player as part of my main system instead of as an external player. After I replaced my old video card with the 4650, Blu-Ray video playback is so much smoother now; no more choppy scenes! Audio and Video are syncing up together nicely! I haven't played any games with my new card yet so I can't make any comments on that. I used to play video games on my PC but these days I don't anymore. However, it's nice to know that I can at least run some DirectX 10.1 games/applications on my system if I ever decide to in the future.
Now on the other hand, the only negative part that I can think of is that it took a while to install the CD software that came with the video card. The installation took several minutes which I didn't expect; I was even doing the installation from another CD player that is actually part of my main system and not as an external disc player. Also, I do recommend downloading the latest ATI Catalyst installation suite since the driver version on the CD is outdated. After I downloaded the update and installed the software, it also took another couple of minutes to install; there's just a lot of stuff that needs to be installed.
Overall the HD 4650 is pretty good in performance. It's price is also a good deal. So if you want to watch HD videos smoothly or just do the normal day to day things like surfing the web or watching Netflix videos etc., consider this card.
The main thing that I was looking for in a video card was that it needed to be a 1/2 length video card that could fit in my custom built system; the interior of my computer chassis is designed a certain way where I can only install half length video cards. My system is configured with an ASUS motherboard, an AMD 64bit Athlon 3700+ 2.22GHz processor, and 2GB of RAM; pretty slow specs compared to the faster configurations in the market. I also did not want to spend the extra money to upgrade all of the main components in my system just to get a speed increase. Instead, I just wanted to replace my existing video card. Before I installed the HD 4650 in my system, I experienced choppy Blu-Ray video playback; my old video card is a PCI-Express card that has 256MB of on board video memory and the card is around two years old. For Blu-Ray video playback, I'm also using an external USB 2.0 Serial ATA LG HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disc player; I'm sure I would see better playback results if I installed the LG player as part of my main system instead of as an external player. After I replaced my old video card with the 4650, Blu-Ray video playback is so much smoother now; no more choppy scenes! Audio and Video are syncing up together nicely! I haven't played any games with my new card yet so I can't make any comments on that. I used to play video games on my PC but these days I don't anymore. However, it's nice to know that I can at least run some DirectX 10.1 games/applications on my system if I ever decide to in the future.
Now on the other hand, the only negative part that I can think of is that it took a while to install the CD software that came with the video card. The installation took several minutes which I didn't expect; I was even doing the installation from another CD player that is actually part of my main system and not as an external disc player. Also, I do recommend downloading the latest ATI Catalyst installation suite since the driver version on the CD is outdated. After I downloaded the update and installed the software, it also took another couple of minutes to install; there's just a lot of stuff that needs to be installed.
Overall the HD 4650 is pretty good in performance. It's price is also a good deal. So if you want to watch HD videos smoothly or just do the normal day to day things like surfing the web or watching Netflix videos etc., consider this card.
- 512MB Memory
- Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
- Features Stream Processing Units
- DirectX 10.1 Support
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