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Many motherboards now come with perfectly serviceable onboard graphics. However, there are still good reasons to buy an inexpensive new graphics card such as this EAH4350 from Asus.
Many onboard graphics chipsets support only a single display, so you’ll need a dedicated graphics card to run two monitors. This card has three outputs – DVI, VGA and HDMI – though you can use only two of these simultaneously. Still, this will let you connect a display without the use of an adaptor. It’s also passively cooled, so there’s no noisy fan.
We got smooth playback of Blu-ray movies when using this card in combination with a modest E2160 Pentium Dual Core processor. Its built-in controller means you can output digital audio over HDMI without any extra cabling or fuss.
Despite being one of ATI’s latest chipsets, the Radeon HD 4350 isn’t suitable for running demanding modern games. It scored poorly in our tests and was unable to produce playable frame rates in either Crysis or Call of Duty 4. However, we did enjoy a game of Civilization 4: Colonization without problems.
This is a great choice for those after a new graphics card for any PC, as long as you don’t need to play fast-moving 3D action games.
