ATI Radeon HD 3450

Hi!

I am atm helping my brother to purchase a new Laptop - we are currently looking at the brand new Dell Studio laptops. What I see is that Dell is currently offering the ATI Radeon HD 3450 video card. I personally have the XPS M1330 with a Nvidia Geforce 8400m GS.

I am fairly known with Nvidia cards, but I have no idea how the ATI compares to the Nvidia. My question is - how is the gaming performance of the ATI Radeon HD 3450 compared to the Nvidia Geforce 8400m GS?

Thanks in advance!

Nicholas Bendt

 

Radeon HD 3450 will be about twice as good as the 8400 GS

 

Wow that is some difference - would you by any chance know how it can be that Dell offers the Nvidia to the XPS m1330 and this ATI card for the lower range Studio?

 

Well, you have to take into account the fact that the m1330 is a 13" and that the Studio is a 15". I don't really know if the HD 3450 can fit in a 13", but they're stilll priced about the same after that. The HD3450 is much newer, and when the XPS m1330 came out the HD3450 was not yet available so that might also be the reason. As to why the HD3450 is priced at $75 whereas the 8400M GS is priced at $100, I suppose it might just be because this is ATI's response to Nvidia's already successful 8 series, so they are probably trying to be more competitive in the performance/price game.

 

Hi!

Thank you very much, both of you - you have certainly helped my brother with making his choice easier!

It will be the ATI card and I will have to stay jealous of having the poorer card

Cheers!

Nicholas Bendt

 

it's NOT going to be twice as good!
they are on the same level, but the ATI card is better by a small degree, it also does a better job at decoding hi-def videos.
Satyrion, you might have confused hd 3650 with hd 3450, the former is about twice as fast as 8400m gs.

 

No you are confusing 8400GS for the 8400GT...

what is said is correct and 3650 is 4 times fater than 8400GS..

 

No he is actually right. the 3450 is the equivalent of an 8400gs. twice as good would be 8600gt level preformance which is where the hd 3650 takes its place.

 

yes i thought of 3200 and 3450 in crossfire. Anyway 8400 GS scores like 1000 3dmarks while 3650 and 8600GT scores like 4k so i would say its about 4 times stronger. This is in games as well.

 

8400m gs gets about 1.5k. a single hd 3450 gets about the same.
the hd 3650/8600m gt is quite powerful comparatively speaking, you're right about that.

 

8400gs and the hd3450 are equivalent but you get 128mb in the nvidia card and 256mb in the ATI card.

 

4x the 3dmarks doesn't mean 4x the performance. And the 8600m GT is NOT 4x as powerful as a 8400m GS. Hell, CrossfireX with 3200 and 3450 will not mean 100% more performance.

 

There's a great deal on Studios now.....the only game I play is WOW will the card be able to handle it on medium settings?

 

I know for a fact that Hybrid Crossfire isn't available on the HP dv5t and I'm pretty sure that the Studio doesn't have it either. In Hybrid crossfire, I guess it gets like 1.7x the performance of an 8400 GS when the 3450 is in hybrid crossfire, but as a single card its about the same, maybe marginally better. WoW isn't a very graphic intensive game, I'm pretty sure you could run it higher than on medium.

 

Continue this discussion in the GPU Guide . . . thanks.