Radeon HD 3650 Video card questions

[slither9206]

Ok well I typed out a lengthy message, but I ended up timing out ofthe forums so I lost it.. probably for the good of the readers. :P

OK I ordered the wrong video card on accident. I ordered a DDR 2 as opposed to a DDR 3 because I chose a different site and everything else on the cards awas exactly the same.

Questions:
1) Is DDR 3 really much of an improvement over DDR 2? And for the sake of future reference is DDR 4 even 2x better than DDR 2?
2) According to the Catalyst Control Center the card runs at 51°C (125°F) without anything, but Vista running. (not even antivirus/firewall, they expired on me) That sounds a little bit hot, and I'm wondering if I should be concerned about it being 1/3 of the way to the ATI maximum temp zone?

[mjc]

Answer #2 first...

First off, Vista is not 'nothing'...every graphics call (that means backgrounds, menus, buttons, etc) is all 3d graphics. So, basically, by just running Vista, you are essentially running DOS + Quake (at full tilt).

And modern GPUs are designed to run at temps that can heat your morning coffee...as you said, it is about 1/3 to the max...think back a few years ago when the 'max' was around 120 C and the card ran between 35 and 45...call it 40...it was still about 1/3 max.

#1

No, DDR4 is not 2x DDR2. And yes, DDR3 is better than DDR2...but, by how much...that depends. The same goes for DDR4 and DDR5 (which is showing up in some of the highest end video cards).