The ATI Radeon HD 4350 is an excellent card for the HTPC crowd. The ability to fit the card into a half height bay means it’ll fit into most cases without issue. The ability to run 7.1 HDMI Audio is a definite plus as the card can play audio without an audio card or even onboard audio. The ability to do full-screen Blu-Ray playback smoothly on the graphics chip is also a big plus.
The negatives of this card are that it just doesn’t have the performance to play the good upcoming DiretX 10.1 games with the features enabled. The 9400GT is more of a gamers’ card than the ATI card. Its performance is higher across the board but again it becomes a matter of what do you want from a discrete graphics card. Do you want a card that plays the games with the highest resolution and settings? Then you’d be better off buying a more expensive card as the game play experience would be much more enjoyable. If you’re a casual gamer that is looking to improve on the mediocre Intel integrated graphics then this is the card for you if you have $40 to spend.
