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In addition to a set of standard benchmarks, we decided to take a close look at how game performance is on the Diamond HD 3450. Of course the HD3450 can not be considered a 'gaming card' buy any stretch, there may be some people out there who are interested in how performs in this arena. Perhaps someone who has upgraded from an IGP to a HD 3450 is reading this now, wondering if it is worth it pay for a game they might not be able to play. We decided to look at performance in four popular games out right now -- Bioshock, World In Conflict, Quake Wars: Enemy Territory, X3: Reunion, and Unreal Tournament 3 --- to answer this question.

We decided to play with the graphic settings of each of these games, until we found a optimum balance between framerates and detail settings. We had hopes of reaching an average framerate of between 30 and 40 for these games, on medium-low image quality levels.

Here are the specifications of our benchmarking system:

• CPU: E6750 Intel Core 2 Duo at 3.2 GHZ (400 * 8) 
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6
• Memory: 4 gigabytes of Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM (4 * 1024MB @ 1067MHz) 
• Power Supply: OCZ 850W GXS
• Hard Drive: 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA, w/16 MB cache
• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U 12
• OS: Vista SP1

A overclocked Core 2 running at 3.2 GHz is probably not a typical system that HD 3450 would find itself installed into, but we needed a bit more horsepower in order to mitigate the game performance hit when taking our FRAPs videos. For our game benchmarks further in the article, our system was running at 2.6 GHz, with the memory running at 833 MHz. Regrettably we did not have a 780G motherboard at hand in order to test out the Hybrid Crossfire system.

X3: Reunion

This was the oldest game out of the bunch, so we decided to start with it first.

X3 ran quite well. With texture and shader quality set to 'medium' (and no AA or AF) the game had no absolutely no problems at all. Framerates would generally range from the low 30's to the high '50s. This was at a resolution of 1280x1024. Of all the five games we looked at, X3 was the game that ran the smoothest. So, if space-trading, dog-fighting, Elite/Privateer-type games are your thing, you can get away with not spending over a $100 on a video card to fly a starship.

World In Conflict

Emboldened by our success with X3: Reunion, we decided to jump right into the most demanding game in our mix, World In Conflict. Unfortunately, we can't say the results were as an encouraging as with X3 -- but they weren't awful either.

Deciding to stick with the 1024x768, we switched the game to DX9 mode and set everything on 'medium.' During cut scenes, the average would be about 28 FPS, while the range would be between 22 and 31 FPS. For playing the actual game, fly around with the camera would give us an average of about 28 FPS. But if things got hairy, the average would drop to the low twenties -- however, it was still playable, just not as smooth as we would like.

Please note, that in the recording of this video, the game suffered about a 8 FPS loss, so things were a little bit less choppy when playing without recording. But this nonetheless gives you a good idea of what the game looks like on the medium settings.

If you would like to see how things look in this game when the details are maxed, and how DX9 and DX10 compare, check out my performance guide.