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Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 512MB
Introduction
I was a little noncommittal in recommending the 4670 and I suspect that I’m pretty much in the same boat with regards to the 4650. On the one hand, these are inexpensive cards with impressive performance for the price, but on the other hand, for very little extra, much more capable cards can be had. But let’s say, for example, you had sixty bucks and only wanted to play WoW or the Orange Box. Will this card do it? Is it worth the ten dollar premium over a 9500 GT, or the twenty dollar (30%!) price hike for the 4670? I’m sure these questions keep you up at night, just like they do me. I got a hold of a Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 and can, conveniently, compare it to its contemporaries. This is a stock-clocked video card, with a long, broad Sapphire-branded heatsink. I’ve named it Charles, because it’s blue.  Sapphire’s packaging is nice and lean, with a small box and a very small amount of cardboard--I mention this only because we went through a period where packaging got a little out of hand, and this is a great example of boxing up only as much as what’s needed. The card’s a little longer than the slot it goes into, with a single-slot active aluminum heatsink and no auxiliary power connections. There’s a pair of CrossFire fingers at the top and the video-out goes VGA, DIN (with composite and component adapters) DVI, with an included HDMI adapter. If not for the active heatsink, I’d say that this card was HTPC-ready. There’s also a paper manual and driver CD. 
Page 1: Introduction, The Card & Bundle
Page 2: Specifications and Setup Page 3: DirectX 10 Titles Page 4: DX9, OpenGL, and Synthetics Page 5: Video, Power, and Overclocking Page 6: Conclusion 
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