ATI Radeon HD 3450 PCI

The ATI Radeon HD 3450 PCI is a low-end graphics card from AMD, built on the 55 nm TeraScale architecture with the RV620 chip. It packs 181 million transistors on a 67 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 2.7M per mm². The card ships with 512 MB of DDR2 memory on a 64-bit bus, providing 6.400 GB/s of bandwidth, and its GPU runs at a memory clock of 400 MHz (800 Mbps effective). With 40 shading units, 4 texture mapping units, and 4 ROPs, it delivers 48.00 GFLOPS of FP32 compute, 2.400 GTexel/s texture fill, and 2.400 GPixel/s pixel fill. The card is end-of-life, released on January 22, 2008, and occupies a single slot with no auxiliary power connectors, requiring only a 200 W suggested PSU. Its PCI bus interface distinguishes it from the more common PCIe cards of its era.

Benchmark Performance

The database records no benchmark scores for this card; the average benchmark score is 0. However, its percentile rank among all GPUs is 50, placing it exactly at the midpoint of the distribution. This is a curious position, as a card with no recorded scores would typically be excluded from percentile calculations, but the data indicates a median standing. In practice, the raw throughput figures tell a clearer story. The 48.00 GFLOPS of FP32 performance is modest by any standard, and the 2.400 GTexel/s and 2.400 GPixel/s rates are correspondingly low. These numbers suggest a card designed for basic 2D acceleration, legacy gaming at low resolutions, and minimal 3D workloads. The 40 shading units are arranged in a TeraScale configuration, which was AMD's unified shader architecture, but the sheer count is small compared to contemporary parts. The lack of any boost or base clock in the specifications further indicates that the card runs at a fixed, conservative speed to stay within its 25 W TDP envelope. Without direct benchmark comparisons, the percentile rank offers the only quantitative anchor, but it should be interpreted cautiously given the absence of actual scores. The card's compute and fill rates are consistent with a product aimed at entry-level OEM systems and office PCs, not gaming or workstation tasks.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

This card does not include any ray tracing cores or tensor cores; both fields are null in the specification. Consequently, there is no hardware acceleration for ray-traced effects or AI-based features such as DLSS. The API support is limited to DirectX 10.1 (with a 10_1 feature level) and OpenGL 3.3. There is no Vulkan support, which places it firmly in the pre-Vulkan era. DirectX 10.1 introduced some incremental improvements over DirectX 10, including better shader model 4.1 support and advanced anti-aliasing modes, but it lacks the features of later DirectX versions. OpenGL 3.3 provides a functional but dated set of capabilities, sufficient for older applications but insufficient for modern titles that rely on Vulkan or DirectX 12. The absence of RT and tensor cores means that any ray tracing or machine learning workloads would have to be handled entirely in software, which is impractical given the low compute throughput. The card's feature set is a reflection of its 2008 release date and its position as a budget part. It supports the essentials for its time—DirectX 10.1 games and OpenGL 3.3 applications—but nothing more.

How It Compares

The fact pack lists no nearest rivals for this card, so direct comparative deltas are unavailable. The only positional data is the 50th percentile rank among all GPUs in the database. This median placement is surprising for a card with such modest specifications, but it may reflect the database's inclusion of many even older or less capable GPUs. Without rival scores, we can infer its standing from its own metrics. Its 48.00 GFLOPS FP32 and 6.400 GB/s memory bandwidth are far below the figures seen in mainstream gaming cards of the same era, which typically offered several hundred GFLOPS and 20+ GB/s. However, the card's 25 W TDP and PCI interface suggest it was designed for compatibility with legacy systems that lacked a PCIe slot, making it a niche product. Its predecessor, the Radeon R500 PCIe, and its successor, the Radeon R700, bracket it in the product line, but no specifications for those are provided. The card's position as a PCI (not PCIe) model further isolates it; most contemporary GPUs used PCIe. In the absence of direct comparisons, the percentile rank serves as the sole relative metric, but it should be weighted against the card's absolute performance class. The card is not a competitor to any modern GPU; it is a historical artifact that occupies a low tier in the database.

Who Should Consider It

Given the card's 48.00 GFLOPS compute and 2.400 GTexel/s texture rate, it is only suitable for very light 3D workloads. The 512 MB memory and 6.400 GB/s bandwidth further restrict its usefulness. Benchmark results, or lack thereof, indicate that this card cannot handle modern games at any playable setting. It would be appropriate for a system that requires basic video output, such as a retro PC for Windows XP-era titles, or as a diagnostic card for testing PCI slots. For resolutions, the card's pixel rate of 2.400 GPixel/s suggests it can manage 1080p for 2D desktop use, but 3D rendering at that resolution would be severely limited. At lower resolutions like 800×600 or 1024×768, and with reduced detail settings, some older games from the early 2000s might run acceptably. The card's lack of hardware T&L (though it does have unified shaders) and its low memory bandwidth mean that even those titles would likely suffer from frame rate drops. The 25 W TDP and absence of power connectors make it easy to install in any system with a 200 W PSU, but the performance ceiling is extremely low. Users with modern expectations should look elsewhere; this card is strictly for legacy or basic display purposes.

Memory Subsystem

The memory subsystem consists of 512 MB of DDR2 memory connected via a 64-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 6.400 GB/s. The memory clock is 400 MHz, with an effective data rate of 800 Mbps. These figures are modest even for 2008. A 64-bit bus is half the width of entry-level cards of that era, and DDR2 at 400 MHz is slower than the GDDR3 or GDDR5 used in higher-end parts. The 512 MB capacity is sufficient for low-resolution textures, but at higher resolutions, the limited capacity and bandwidth become severe bottlenecks. The pixel rate of 2.400 GPixel/s and texture rate of 2.400 GTexel/s are directly constrained by the memory bandwidth; with only 6.400 GB/s available, the card cannot feed its shaders quickly enough to sustain heavy fill-rate demands. For modern games that require large texture pools and high resolution, this memory subsystem would be a critical limiting factor. The card's PCI bus interface further compounds the issue, as PCI's maximum theoretical bandwidth is far lower than PCIe, though the card's own memory bandwidth is the primary constraint. In summary, the 512 MB, 64-bit, DDR2 configuration is a clear indicator of the card's entry-level positioning, and it would struggle with any workload that demands more than a few hundred megabytes of video memory or high bandwidth.