3850 advice

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brewcrew814

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2005
Messages
134
Hi All,
I'm getting ready to cancel my order from buy <dot> com for the 3870. I would have gotten it for 212 shipped but I have a feeling it's going to be a long wait. Shows on order :(
Any how, I'm doing a build for my older brother that plays some games most likey will be on a 20 or 22" WSFP. Probably older First Person Shooters and my nephews may play WoW and Vanguard on it occassionly.
do the 512MB versions up FPS noticeably?

Here's the 2 I'm looking at

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102715 512MB version 199 USD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129101 256MB version

Was also checking out the GCubes. Not sure how good those are.

Thanks All!!!
 
Just got 2 visiontek 3850's from bestbuy for 143 each. I'm waiting for my other parts to be delivered 1/4/08 from the Egg, then I'll test em.
 
Get 512MB if you are running at larger than 1024x768 . You will never need 512MB with that little resolution.
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For crysis and splinter cell 3, yes, it looks like the extra memory makes a significant difference at higher resolutions. Not so much at all in most other games and lower res where the performance is alarmingly close considering the extra memory. If you're worried about performance at high res, AA and AF then you probably want to look at a 8800 GT anyway, and I don't think you're budgeting for that.

Over the past week or so I've been doing more investigation and reading. I went from wanting a 256Mb 3850, to a 512Mb 3850 to a 8800GT and back again. The AA performance is shabby but the price is right and 90% of current games are easily handled with the reference 256Mb version. If the 512Mb version is only £20/ $30 more then yeah, it probably is worth the extra if you are going to use the card on a 22" or 24" screen with upcoming titles.

Crysis is the deal-breaker in the equation. Depends if you have to play it on a big monitor at high settings. If you compromise on the detail level then you can get away with it on the stock 256Mb 3850 up to a 22", just about.

Different games can drastically favour different cards, so look into which games you want to play and google up some benchmarks. The worst thing about the 38XX cards is that they are rubbish with AA, but if you can live with the odd slightly jagged edge in the latest titles then it seems to be a great value card.
 
40-50FPS on a 256MB 3850 on WoW @ 1680x1050, thats on a AMD BE2300 (35W 1.9Ghz x2) on a VIA motherboard, so the card probably isn't running its best......and all on a 250W power supply no less.
 
Thanks for the replies all. I gave buy dot com a little while more to ship my card since I won't have time to build my brothers comp until end of this week anyway. I just got my fedex tracking number for the VisionTek HD3870, so that's awesome.
 
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