Diamond ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP 512MB GDDR2 Video Card

by Diamond

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 3 x 11.8 inches ; 1.4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B002GHBW52
• Item model number: 4650512A
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,216 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 25, 2009

Product Description

Loaded with the latest features, ATI RadeonTM HD 4600 Series graphics cards deliver a level of gaming performance previously only found in high-end graphics cards. Redefine the way you play HD games and enjoy unprecedented levels of graphics realism powered by 320 stream processing units, up to 512MB of memory and support for Microsoft DirectX 10.1 games. Upgrade your graphics card and watch Blu-ray movies and play HD content with incredible visual fidelity1. These graphics cards do it all with break-through energy efficiency, eliminating the need for an external power connection and making them easy to install. With its 92mm cooling fan, this soon to be part of the Professional Cool Solution (PCS) product line, increases air flow at a lower fan speed that easily dissipates heat from an optimized heat sink which fully covers the PWM and memory. The special fan design avoids direct contact with high temperatures emanating from the heat sink, extending the life cycle of the cooling fan. Keeping fan noise at a minimum, the fan speed automatically adjusts while it’s under idle, in 2D or 3D mode—helping to deliver the perfect heat dissipation, allowing a better user experience.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great performance, questionable specs, poor power connector design, October 17, 2009

By 

T. Kadow (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Diamond ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP 512MB GDDR2 Video Card (Personal Computers)

Great Performance...
This card has breathed new life into my aging PC. I installed this in a PC with a Socket 754 Sempron64 3100+ CPU. Running Win XP Pro with 1.5GB RAM. Replaced an NVidia 6200. This PC is used as an HTPC and is connected to a projection TV via Component Video. I do not play any games on it, just run SageTV software with multiple TV capture devices. My old video card was unable to playback 1080i MPEG-2 or any HD-h.264 videos. This Diamond ATI Radeon HD4650 AGP card plays everything flawlessly (provided I am using codecs that are able to use hardware acceleration) with either Overlay mode or VMR-9 Renderless (Full Screen Exclusive). Regular VMR-9 works when playing back in windowed mode, but there is some stuttering during full-screen playback of HD MPEG-2 content with plain VMR-9.

Using the ATI MPEG codec with DXVA hardware acceleration to play back MPEG-2 content full-screen on a 1080i TV, CPU usage maxes out at about 45% for 1080i content, 40% for 720p, and 20% for 480i. Using the MPC-HC h.264 codec to play a 720p file required only about 15% CPU. I am still unable to watch Hulu content at full screen, but this is because there are currently no hardware accelerated codecs for playing back FLASH content, and my Sempron 3100 just doesn't have enough power to handle it.

Questionable Specs...
The picture shown on the Amazon page is still incorrect. The installation guide has a diagram that looks like the picture on Amazon's website, but it's wrong too. The card has 2 DVI connectors and one round S-Video connector. The package includes 1 DVI to VGA adapter, 1 DVI to HDMI adapter, 1, S-Video to Composite adapter, and 1 S-Video to Component (HDTV) adapter. The heat-sink and fan look different too. Oh, and the PCB is green, not red.

The Box says 512MB DDR2 on the front, but the side of the box says 512MB DDR3. Inside the Catalyst Control Panel, it reports the card as having DDR2 memory. The Diamond website lists it as DDR3. There are several other manufactures building HD4650 cards, but from what I can tell all the others used DDR2 (though some had 1024MB).

The Diamond Website says a 300W power supply is required, but the box says 400W. All the other manufacturers that make HD4650 cards seem to recommend 400W. My computer has a 300W supply, and it seems to be OK.


Poor Power Connector Design...
The card requires more power than the AGP bus can provide, so it has an auxiliary power connector (6-pin, 12V). It also includes a 6-pin to 4-pin molex adaptor, in case you have an older power supply that doesn't have one of the 6-pin connectors. The problem is that this connector is on the front of the card (top-left) and sticks straight out. There is no way to plug power into this card without interfering with the first PCI slot on most ATX or mini-ATX motherboards. I was fortunate that I could put a half-height card in that first slot, because a full height card not fit next to this video card. It's a shame they did this, because it is otherwise a nice single-slot card. There are a couple of other manufactures building these HD4650 cards, but they all appear to have the power connector in the same place. It would be much better if they rotated the connector 90 degrees or mounted it on the back of the board.

This is a medium-sized video card. Length-wise, this card just barely fits in my Silverstone LC-17 case. It is a little longer than the old 6200 video card it is replacing. Even with the fan it does fit in a single slot, but as mentioned above, the power connector is likely to interfere with one of your PCI slots.

The fan is super quiet (even with the case open and my head a few inches away, I can't hear it over the LC-17 case fans.

One other note, when you first set the card up, you must connect a monitor to one of the DVI connectors (you can use the VGA adaptor). You cannot get the HDTV output setup correctly the first time if you just connect it straight to the Component HDTV connector. Once you get it setup, you can disconnect the monitor and everything works great.

Bottom line...
Although there are some discrepancies between the data published at Amazon's website, Diamond's website, and the product packaging, and the power connector is layed out poorly, I am happy with the performance I am getting with the card.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars WATCH OUT.... Was listed with DDR3 memory; now shown w/slower DDR2, October 10, 2009

By 

Brighton Funny (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diamond ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP 512MB GDDR2 Video Card (Personal Computers)

Be careful before you buy this card... Until a few days ago, this video card was listed by Amazon as having DDR3 memory.

Inexplicably, this video card is now shown as being equipped with the very different "DDR2" memory (a much slower variety of memory chip). This is after this product was temporarily unavailable for a few days through Amazon (the page was red flagged by Amazon as "Under review" for a few days, and then became available again with the memory spec quietly changed).

What's going on? All the reviews of this card, the product's .pdf sheet, and even Diamond's own Web site and product literature note that this is a DDR3 card. It's one of the chief reasons this card's performance has been so well-reviewed - particularly for users with older processors (and since this is an AGP card, that will apply to most people interested in this item). To the point: Without the DDR3 memory, it's not the same card. How can it be sold here under the identical model number (Diamond Model #4650512A)? It is very misleading.

UPDATE: There are multiple user complaints over at another popular electronics retailer (with the initials NE), where customers note they ordered this card expecting DDR3 memory (as of this writing, it's still listed as having DDR3 over there), and received DDR2 instead. I contacted Diamond directly asking what's going on - as I mentioned, Diamond's own Web site lists this model as having DDR3 memory - and have yet to receive any response (it's been 6 days so far). Buyer beware.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Diamond ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP 512MB GDDR2 Video Card, November 10, 2009

By 

Robert Opgenorth - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Diamond ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP 512MB GDDR2 Video Card (Personal Computers)

Card works great. It lets you make the most of your older AGP slot motherboards. The drawbacks are the installation instructions are poor and I had a hard time installing the drivers to make it work. The card also takes up a lot of space and the cooling fan sticks down so far as to make the adjacent PCI slot unusable. The specs list a minimum 300W power supply needed to run this card. I'm currently running it from a 250W supply without any trouble, but I don't have a lot of other loads on my system.