ATI Radeon HD 3450 Graphics Card

A replacement for the current 2400 series, the HD 3450 is an entry level
card. Like the high end HD 3850 (also reviewed this month), this card also has
support for DirectX 10.1, to boost your PC with the power of HD. It's based on
the 55nm fabrication process and has 181 million transistors. It comes with 40
stream processing units and has support for Shader Model 4.1. Even though it
supports HDMI output, a dedicated port for the same was missing, which could
have added to the overall value of the card. However, barring the missing HDMI
port, it has support for CrossFire, HDTV and DVI.

Being an entry level card, it would be a bit too harsh to expect it to manage
a good score in any of our tests, but the card did manage to show enough courage
to at least play the graphically challenging tests at decent enough fps. In
3DMark06, it managed a score of 1534 which is good enough for an entry level
card. While playing Company of Heroes, it managed an average score of around 20
fps under minimum setting (1024x760). Similarly, for Crysis it managed to play
the game at minimum setting, but wasn't quite exciting. Same was the case with
Unreal Tournament 3. Overall, the card is meant for people who want a basic
graphics experience with good enough HD support, but certainly not for gamers.

Bottomline: The support for DirectX 10.1 and
good enough HD support make it an ideal entry level card.