The HD 3850 AGP User Experience

Make sure you update your Motherboard chipset drivers!!!

Mine were updated but glitched, and I could not get the HD 3850 working on my FX-53 rig with SK8N. After I updated chipset this time though I noticed the AGP 8x was finally installed correctly in the CCC and all the games work now. Im using ATI's 8.7 available on their website.

Weeeee! What an upgrade from X800 I can't even believe it. Devil May Cry 4 looks stunning with 8xAA! 16x AF @ 1680x1050. 40-60 fps.
 
Nice!! Is good to see an Athlon FX user, they're scarce, what a great gaming chip it was, and still having quite a punch currently, (Specially if overclocked)
 
so riva tuner says that this card is running at 71 degrees, stock clock speed out of the box

is that normal? i'm thinking no
 
I just received my video card, a Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 AGP i've noticed that i can use the official ati drivers and don't need a hotfix.. it shows up as a Radeon HD 3800 Series in the device manager.. it has a newer bios than the previous sapphire radeon HD 3850 agp cards...if anybody's having trouble installing this card with the official drivers.. i may be able to upload the bios.. the hardware id on this cards bios is 9505 instead of 9515. the 9505 hardware id is listed in the official catalyst drivers 8.6 & 8.7..as a Radeon HD 3800 Series if anyone would like this newer bios, let me know... the date of this bios is 03/17/08 and the bios version is ATOMBIOSBK-ATI VER010.079.000.002.000000..
 
I was playing with my videocard BIOS and I changed the device ID and even the manufacturer and the official drivers would install, but at reboot they won't initialize properly. I decided to modify the original HD 3850 AGP BIOS from ATI which is used on some powercolor and club 3d cards, and I changed the Core clock speed and fan settings, and now the official drivers install and works properly. The Overdrive feature wouldn't work but that's ok since the GPU limit with that BIOS would be at 770MHZ and I wanted to push it at HD 3870 Stock speed. The memory speed is running at 1.89GHZ which is conservative, I might decide to push it further later, no more driver glitches!!!
 
warehos said:
so riva tuner says that this card is running at 71 degrees, stock clock speed out of the box

is that normal? i'm thinking no
Click to expand...

Yeah thats normal. Same temps here initially right after installing the card. Problem is the shitty stock heatsink, so even if I had a 200 cfm fan directed at it during @ experiments my furmark temps were still around 90 c.


evolucion8 said:
I was playing with my videocard BIOS and I changed the device ID and even the manufacturer and the official drivers would install, but at reboot they won't initialize properly. I decided to modify the original HD 3850 AGP BIOS from ATI which is used on some powercolor and club 3d cards, and I changed the Core clock speed and fan settings, and now the official drivers install and works properly. The Overdrive feature wouldn't work but that's ok since the GPU limit with that BIOS would be at 770MHZ and I wanted to push it at HD 3870 Stock speed. The memory speed is running at 1.89GHZ which is conservative, I might decide to push it further later, no more driver glitches!!!
Click to expand...

What are you using for bios flashing for your 3850?
 
I'm using the latest version of WinFlash which is 2012. Works outstanding, in Vista it needs to be run as Administrator Mode, otherwise it may freeze your PC.
 
Seithennin said:
I just received my video card, a Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 AGP i've noticed that i can use the official ati drivers and don't need a hotfix.. it shows up as a Radeon HD 3800 Series in the device manager.. it has a newer bios than the previous sapphire radeon HD 3850 agp cards...if anybody's having trouble installing this card with the official drivers.. i may be able to upload the bios.. the hardware id on this cards bios is 9505 instead of 9515. the 9505 hardware id is listed in the official catalyst drivers 8.6 & 8.7..as a Radeon HD 3800 Series if anyone would like this newer bios, let me know... the date of this bios is 03/17/08 and the bios version is ATOMBIOSBK-ATI VER010.079.000.002.000000..
Click to expand...

Will you upload that BIOS somewhere? I'm interested of it, because my friend has the Sapphire HD card that came first and has the same 9515 ID and has to use the Hotfix. Thank you!
 
hey i also have the 3/17 bios (3850agp) and i did not need the hotfix to install the drivers. however, i cannot overclock past 700 core. i'm getting vpu recover and games crashing if i push past 700. i'm thinkin its either bios locked or the temps are too high. i'm getting 80-84C load on furmark, 64C idle. i just applied arctic silver 5 on the chip today so ill find out in a few days if it helps.

specs: Antec smart power 500w
AMD 3800X2 toledo @ 2.7ghz
Asus A8V, 2GB DDR
Sapphire 3850AGP (stock cooler - sucks)
 
evolucion8 said:
Will you upload that BIOS somewhere? I'm interested of it, because my friend has the Sapphire HD card that came first and has the same 9515 ID and has to use the Hotfix. Thank you!
Click to expand...
Here's a link to how completely softmod your 3850. Even better then a simple bios flash b/c you can change core/mem/ core voltage and fan speeds to your preferences.

toprock23 said:
hey i also have the 3/17 bios (3850agp) and i did not need the hotfix to install the drivers. however, i cannot overclock past 700 core. i'm getting vpu recover and games crashing if i push past 700. i'm thinkin its either bios locked or the temps are too high. i'm getting 80-84C load on furmark, 64C idle. i just applied arctic silver 5 on the chip today so ill find out in a few days if it helps.

specs: Antec smart power 500w
AMD 3800X2 toledo @ 2.7ghz
Asus A8V, 2GB DDR
Sapphire 3850AGP (stock cooler - sucks)
Click to expand...

Sound like an issue I had when I pushed past 2.8 on my motherboard with agp async locked down to 66. Check if its enabled or disabled b/c now even with agp slot oc'ed I have no problem pushing the card to my sig values but I usually run at 830 1050 for everyday gaming especially demanding games like crysis.

evolucion8 said:
I'm using the latest version of WinFlash which is 2012. Works outstanding, in Vista it needs to be run as Administrator Mode, otherwise it may freeze your PC.
Click to expand...

Same, I also used ati RBE 1.12 for bios editing. Does anyone know if the 3850 are really limited to 1.327 max vcore? Would be nice if I could pump more voltage in and get a 900 core.
 
Sound like an issue I had when I pushed past 2.8 on my motherboard with agp async locked down to 66. Check if its enabled or disabled b/c now even with agp slot oc'ed I have no problem pushing the card to my sig values but I usually run at 830 1050 for everyday gaming especially demanding games like crysis.

So r u saying that I should remove the locks? Don't u get hard drive corruption if that happens? btw, im still using old ATA133 drives
 
toprock23 said:
Sound like an issue I had when I pushed past 2.8 on my motherboard with agp async locked down to 66. Check if its enabled or disabled b/c now even with agp slot oc'ed I have no problem pushing the card to my sig values but I usually run at 830 1050 for everyday gaming especially demanding games like crysis.
Click to expand...

So r u saying that I should remove the locks? Don't u get hard drive corruption if that happens? btw, im still using old ATA133 drives
 
toprock23 said:
So r u saying that I should remove the locks? Don't u get hard drive corruption if that happens? btw, im still using old ATA133 drives
Click to expand...

You should be ok then. What are you using to connect the hds to the mobo, old IDE cables?
 
yes i'm using old IDE cables. i'll try to unlock the agp/pci and see what happens. thanks
 
ok i have unlocked agp/pci and i could not boot into windows. i put the locks back on and everything is back to normal. however, i'm having 2nd thoughts and i think that my power supply may be the reason i can't overclock the 3850. its an antec smart power 500w. maybe i should go for an enermax 600w?
 
I have an AGP 3850 with device id 9515 and when I contacted Sapphire support, they told me that there are no bios upgrades for that card. Are they lying?
 
toprock23 said:
ok i have unlocked agp/pci and i could not boot into windows. i put the locks back on and everything is back to normal. however, i'm having 2nd thoughts and i think that my power supply may be the reason i can't overclock the 3850. its an antec smart power 500w. maybe i should go for an enermax 600w?
Click to expand...

I've got a 650 coolermaster but I don't think your 500w psu is the limiting factor in this case.

Also it might be your asus av8 motherboard. I've got an asus av8-x mobo that I tried out to see if I could get a higher oc on it and I couldn't push it past 2.85 stable. Funny thing is I'm back to my ecs mobo and right now I'm testing out 2.96ghz and so far got 6hr prime stability on it while i was sleeping. Orthos was still running fine but I stopped it b/c I had to get some work done. I think the bios that asus put out for that mobo must be sub par b/c I had no trouble adjusting the cpu core voltages in windows and etc but it wouldn't let me go past 2.85 at all.
 
ok Question for you guys. Is this card the answer for me?

The only game I currently plany anymore is WoW. I cant run it with everything turned on with my current set up. And even with 2x multisample and a few things turned off my FPS drops to less than 20 at times. I run a dual monitor setup. 2 x 20 inch LCD's at 1600x1200. And I game at 1600x1200.

Current build.

IC7-G
P4 3.4Ghz (no OC)
2G Corsair 434Mhz ram
Sapphire X1950GT (oc to gpu-608MHz; mem-770MHz)
2 - 120Gb SATA segates (old!!) in raid 0
And a Enermax 475watt
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article149-page1.html

Should I consider the 3850 AGP? if yes would I need a new powersupply? or should I just drop $850 on a completely new setup? I just want to run WoW at 1600x1200 with everything cranked and keep over 40-50fps.
 
well, if you have the money Id go for a totally new setup. You state your hard drives are really old..
But, is the machine doing what you want it to do? If it is.. then I say keep it.

Thats how I determining what I do with mine, as long as it does the software I want, Ill keep it. When it doesnt do what I need it to do then, time for a new system.

Didnt think that WoW was that hard on a system??
 
Hello,

I have Radeon HIS HD3850 IceQ3 Turbo (AGP) and a few questions as well:
1) The card comes with 1 x 8 pin power connector, but my PSU (HEC 500W 2.0) has 2 x 6 pin ones. At default speeds (720/1820) card runs OK, but when it gets overclocked (840/2008), becomes unstable and its GPU gets reseted by driver. I'm asking because that before crashing card works as if it was not overclocked: there're no artifacts at all, even with most demandant games. I guess it is in lack of power due to 6 pin connector. So buying 6 pin to 8 pin connector would solve my problem?
2) All 3DMark's run fine, except 05 (tried all versions available, applied a hotfix). The loading screen gets always blurry and the all tests provide very poor graphics. Result is lower than 3DM06! What is this caused by? Driver?

My PC:
ASUS P4C800 MB;
P4 EE @3,66GHz CPU (Northwood);
2,048MB of Kingston HyperX Ram (500MHz, CL2);
2,5TB HDD (4 drives);
HIS HD3850 IceQ3 Turbo (AGP) Video Card (ID 9515) (With cat 8.5 AGP Hotfix);
HEC 500W PSU (2.0).

CPU and RAM are 100% stable.
 
That overclock is a bit too far and will be unstable if you don't increase the GPU Vcore values. The only difference between the 6 pin cable and the 8 pin cable is that the latter one have additional pins for grounding, hence can give more power. But AFAIK the RV670 GPU doesn't need lots of power and the 6 pin power cable can provide up to 75W of power plus the 35W from the AGP Bus, I do not know if using that converter can give more power to the card, make sure not to mistake and buy the one that is for motherboards in Newegg, it won't work and may cause damage to your card.
 
You see, the indicator of insufficient voltage on the core would be artifacting but still I haven't any of them, even in 3DM06 at 840/2008 . BTW, the same thing happens when I set core to 800 MHz through the cat. At 800 MHz I can run games a bit longer than at 840MHz on the core, but in both cases card starts "hiccuping" and soon crashes. If that was PSU problem I think the whole system would crash but now only GPU gets reseted.
 
kniaugaudiskiss said:
You see, the indicator of insufficient voltage on the core would be artifacting but still I haven't any of them, even in 3DM06 at 840/2008 . BTW, the same thing happens when I set core to 800 MHz through the cat. At 800 MHz I can run games a bit longer than at 840MHz on the core, but in both cases card starts "hiccuping" and soon crashes. If that was PSU problem I think the whole system would crash but now only GPU gets reseted.
Click to expand...

In what games do you experience this gpu crashing? Btw are you talking about ati vpu driver reset?
 
In almost all games I have tried so far: Half-Life Ep1, GTA:SA, Far Cry, Call Of Juarez, Just Cause. Yes, I was talking about ATI VPU driver reset.
 
kniaugaudiskiss said:
In almost all games I have tried so far: Half-Life Ep1, GTA:SA, Far Cry, Call Of Juarez, Just Cause. Yes, I was talking about ATI VPU driver reset.
Click to expand...

I've experienced the same thing but only when I was playing CS:S. For some reason I could never select aa levels of 2xaa, 4xaa or 6xaa without experiencing a gpu crash/ ati vpu driver reset. Strangely enough if I either keep the aa at zero or max it out, I did not experience any problems at all and I could play at any af levels. I think this is probably due to a driver issue then to your overclock. Try playing around with graphics settings in your games to see if there is anything you can do that will make it go away. Also try uninstalling all your ati drivers and run driver cleaner program to completely wipe gpu drivers from registry (nvidia or ati) then reinstall latest ati drivers. However for some reason I can adjust graphics settings problem free in other games that I play namely COD4, Crysis graw2 and rb6.
 
9515. currently 8.6 hotfix

Btw check in CCC if your 3d AA and AF are set to use application settings. Forcing certain settings for AA and AF through CCC maybe the cause of your crashes. Check if those two are set to use application settings.
 
problem fixed: i bought an accelero rev.2 cooler and now i am able to overclock! no more vpu issues. i suggest that anyone buying a 3850 agp dump the stock cooler and buy an aftermarket one. the ones from sapphire especially are a POS! thanks deadskull for ur help. now i can enjoy my card:)
 
The Sapphire cooler sucks, but I haven't heard issues with Powercolor which fan RPM is stuck at a certain speed, and my ICEQ 3 which works fine too. Don't know if Visiontek cooling works fine, looks weird.
 
toprock23.. did you have any issues installing that accelero rev2? Not too sure running this fan at 85% all the time is a good thing.

So, if youre willing to say, how was your experience doing this exchange?
 
toprock23 said:
problem fixed: i bought an accelero rev.2 cooler and now i am able to overclock! no more vpu issues. i suggest that anyone buying a 3850 agp dump the stock cooler and buy an aftermarket one. the ones from sapphire especially are a POS! thanks deadskull for ur help. now i can enjoy my card:)
Click to expand...
What is your overclock and how hot does it run after the full load?
 
toprock23 said:
problem fixed: i bought an accelero rev.2 cooler and now i am able to overclock! no more vpu issues. i suggest that anyone buying a 3850 agp dump the stock cooler and buy an aftermarket one. the ones from sapphire especially are a POS! thanks deadskull for ur help. now i can enjoy my card:)
Click to expand...
Your welcome :)
How much higher have you been able to clock up so far.
 
Hey guys, new to the forums! I've got a question for you guys.

Seems like my brand new HIS ICEQ TURBO AGP 3850 isnt performing to it's full potential. It's getting really low frames in TF2 (25 or 30) with settings only on medium-low at 1650x1080. I've got the latest hotfix drivers from ATI (8.6 or 7 can't remember exactly). Here are the rest of my system specs:

Pentium 4 3.0ghz w/ HT
INTEL D875PBZ motherboard (downloaded latest BIOS and chipset update yesterday)
3gig system ram (512x2 corsair xms and 1gigx2 ocz LL high performance)
HIS ICEQ TURBO AGP 3850

Let me know if yall need any other specs.

It appears through rivatuner that my gpu usage doesn't get above 8% and is mostly only around 3 to 5 percent. I realize my cpu will bottleneck the card before it can reach its max potential but this seems awfully low. It is underperforming my 6800 GT which is replaced last week (did a full uninstall of driver and ran DC in safe mode). I've also tinkered a little with the settings in CCC. Changing the mipmap settings higher or lower has absolutely no effect in game, it still has the same exact frames. Other games are running subpar too (WoW and the WAR beta ran better with the 6800 GT installed). Thanks in advance for any advice you guys have for me!
 
Just upgraded when I bought the card from a crappy 420W to a really nice 630W Raidmax. 2x22A 12V rails. I've got the 6+2 pci-e connector hooked up to the card for power.
 
Another addition, which is kinda weird. If I unlock ATI - auto-drive, all of the readings disappear. I can no longer view the temperature, load % or clocks.
 
My ICEQ got stable at 800MHz core speed (Only GRID gave me a weird issue of display screen stopping a few seconds, a VPU Recover error and the game continued to play normally, it happened every 3 minutes.), RAM ran stable at 2GHz, idle temps at 53C, Full load at 84C. Even at stock, these temperatures weren't much different, because the IceQ 3 doesn't use copper heatsinks but instead the alluminium ones. But since my system wouldn't benefit of the additional overclocking due to CPU bottlenecking, I just decided to flash the card with an ATi BIOS with the DeviceID of 9505, which I modified to HD 3870 Speeds and increased slighly the fan rotation, also it allowed me to use the official drivers, Overdrive won't work but isn't important. Most games that I play uses the 99% of my GPU (Except some Farbrausch demos which uses like 50% to 66% and the PT Boat Knights of the Sea Benchmark which without Anti Aliasing, does the same.
 
Evolucion, will you please explain how to flash the BIOS of my card with the same deviceID you use? I'm thinking that this may fix the problem with my card.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top