Oh god... it's exactly what I expected.  I seem to recall specifically laughing at the concept of 1GB 3650's in another thread here.  It's a silly marketting gimmick and it also shows why it's important to avoid anything slower than GDDR3 memory.  Aye caramba.  Stuff like this actually annoys me.  Words cannot quite describe the feeling... disappointment with some anger.  It's almost bloated, but it's more like it's just a waste of such potential.

 it exceeded my expectations (negativly) too much memory on a slow gpu decrease performance further ( like the radeon 9800). although honestly, it could be the drivers that limit the speed on this card, but if it is i dont see performance improve so much to make this card take the lead. nice to see diamond back though but this card isnt the beast i was expecting it to be. 

This is just like the MHz race of years past. All this is for are for the people who only know how to turn a computer on a run MS Word and iTunes. Just like in the MHz wars all these people know is a bigger number is better so to market to these people they give them a bigger number to oogle at. And just like in the MHz wars these people don't know the drawbacks of haveing just a bigger number without factoring in other variables.

Next up we will sell you a Geo Metro with 50" tires.....bigger number is better. But if enough people buy the card because it has a bigger number on the box and makes it profitable to do so then I guess thats good marketing. For those of us "in the know" we know better than to judge a book by it's bigger number.

That was a very interesting review...one of the rare cases where throwing more memory at it failed to speed things up. Heck, it even slowed things down! 

Super Dave:

That was a very interesting review...one of the rare cases where throwing more memory at it failed to speed things up. Heck, it even slowed things down! 

not to argue or flame, but this isnt really that rare, alot of times if a thrid party manufacterer goes and adds more memory than recomended the board will see no benifit, or decrease in speed. of course though if a manufacterer makes a 256 and 512 version the 512 *might* be faster but its 99.9% never faster when going over the manufacterer's rating... (i hope this post makes sense... ) 

It is one hell of a marketting thing though.  I bet if they had 1.5GB 8800GTX's, people would have paid an even higher premium for them.  Yet that extra memory would never have been used.  I only hope that people do some simple research on the interweb before purchasing.  It really is as easy as searching for "Diamond Radeon 3850 1GB review" on Google.  I spend days and hours just going through dozens of reviews before I commit to a new video card, but people should at least go through one.

Crisis Causer:

It is one hell of a marketting thing though.  I bet if they had 1.5GB 8800GTX's, people would have paid an even higher premium for them.  Yet that extra memory would never have been used.  I only hope that people do some simple research on the interweb before purchasing.  It really is as easy as searching for "Diamond Radeon 3850 1GB review" on Google.  I spend days and hours just going through dozens of reviews before I commit to a new video card, but people should at least go through one.

i completly agree, i literally spends days and hours looking at reviews (even though i dont have money to buy anything ) and before i buy anything over 100, i make sure it is the best thing i can get for my money.