The HD 3850 AGP User Experience

evolucion8 said:
Great, but why GPU-Z reports the card as a HD 3870? I sent it to Terpfen and someone else (I don't remember his name)
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I didn't receive anything. Furthermore, for some reason, GPU-Z locks my computer up when loading, so I don't think I can make use of this modded BIOS anyway.
 
evolucion8 said:
Great, but why GPU-Z reports the card as a HD 3870? I sent it to Terpfen and someone else (I don't remember his name) and the card still having the same HD 3850 name. Are you sure that you are using the same BIOS that I edited? It would be awesome if I'm able to rename my card as a HD 3870 IceQ 3 like you have, but I'm using Vista and it's called HD 3800 series
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Yes, I'm using the BIOS you gave me. At first my card was also identified as "HD 3800 Series" until I renamed it through the drivers. That's piece of cake:
1) Extract your drivers package and cancel the setup;
2) Search for ".inf" files in the extracted content;
3) The file name of VGA's database should begin with CX_xxxxx. (in cat 8.7 it's named CX_66900);
4) Search for "HD 3800 Series" with DeviceID 9505;
5) Choose the name for your card and save your changes;
6) Run the setup and install the drivers.
I have included a screenshot as well:
 
I tryied that (Modifying the DeviceID and VendorID using the original BIOS) but it doesn't work (The CCC will not detect the card under Vista). I just used the ATi HD 3850 AGP reference BIOS found on Techpowerup VGA BIOS Collection and modified core settings and fan rpm management to match the ones found in the original BIOS.
 
Terpfen said:
I didn't receive anything. Furthermore, for some reason, GPU-Z locks my computer up when loading, so I don't think I can make use of this modded BIOS anyway.
Click to expand...

Yeah sorry, it was Volken which has the IceQ 3 card. I already modified a BIOS for a Sapphire card that allows the use of the official drivers, if GPU-Z lock your PC, may be there are some issues with your chipset or in the AGP settings like Fast Writes etc, that's simply not normal.
 
kniaugaudiskiss said:
Yes, I'm using the BIOS you gave me. At first my card was also identified as "HD 3800 Series" until I renamed it through the drivers. That's piece of cake:
1) Extract your drivers package and cancel the setup;
2) Search for ".inf" files in the extracted content;
3) The file name of VGA's database should begin with CX_xxxxx. (in cat 8.7 it's named CX_66900);
4) Search for "HD 3800 Series" with DeviceID 9505;
5) Choose the name for your card and save your changes;
6) Run the setup and install the drivers.
I have included a screenshot as well:
Click to expand...

Oh I see, sorry, I just have some memory issues with my brain, needs replacement :) , nice, I was a bit confused when I saw the HD 3870 name, nice that it works fine with your card, but I have a question? Does changing the name in the driver invalidates the driver digital signing?
 
evolucion8 said:
Oh I see, sorry, I just have some memory issues with my brain, needs replacement :) , nice, I was a bit confused when I saw the HD 3870 name, nice that it works fine with your card, but I have a question? Does changing the name in the driver invalidates the driver digital signing?
Click to expand...

Yeap, changing the name in the driver invalidates the driver digital signing, but after clicking "Continue anyway" everything goes fine. Driver works as stable as without renaming and it doesn't affect the performance negatively at all.
 
Reading all this with much interest. Got me the accelero S1 cooler + fans and mounted it on my Sapphire card. Would someone be kind enough to send me a version of the modified bios that is being discussed here?

Thanks! :)
 
I sent you the file, let me know of any issues, remember that the RPM are modified to improve the cooling using the stock cooler, so since you have a different cooler let me know of the results, it should run as cooler as the north pole :)
 
Excellent, thanks. Gonna fiddle around with it probably tonight, and will post the results!
 
Hello guys,, i recently installed the latest agp hotfix for my vga card from ati.amd website n after installation i noticed that my pc hangs if i tab on applications fast or move my mouse fast, n when i played pes2008 the game stutters badly which annoyed me n sometimes sound distortion,, i dont know whats happenening, can som1 assist me?
 
nrgmania said:
Hello guys,, i recently installed the latest agp hotfix for my vga card from ati.amd website n after installation i noticed that my pc hangs if i tab on applications fast or move my mouse fast, n when i played pes2008 the game stutters badly which annoyed me n sometimes sound distortion,, i dont know whats happenening, can som1 assist me?
Click to expand...

Stuttering at higher load may mean that your PSU cannot provide enough "juice" for your PC. What is your system and what PSU are you currently running? Have you tried running 3DMark's or other resource hungry programs?
 
My upgrade miserably failed.. I saved the original bios, deinstalled the drivers, flashed the custom bios Evolution sent to me, and installed the ATI Cat 8.8 (non-hotfix) drivers. The thing did boot up, but the screen was hopelessly corrupted. The CCC showed a GPU clock of 300, and I could hardly move my mouse and click anyting, it all was extremely slow.

I flashed back to the bios I had saved (good tip :) ) and everythings working again. But now Im left with the feeling I can do a lot better..

Any ideas?
 
kniaugaudiskiss said:
Stuttering at higher load may mean that your PSU cannot provide enough "juice" for your PC. What is your system and what PSU are you currently running? Have you tried running 3DMark's or other resource hungry programs?
Click to expand...

dude. my system spec is as follows?
Amd barton 3000+ installed on an asus a7n8x deluxe with 2 gb ram and 2 wd hdd set in raid 0 each 500gb so total 1 tera n his hd 3850 iceq3 turbo 512 mb agp n creative xfi sound blaster xtereme gamer sound card n last a 450w psu.
 
evolucion8 said:
I sent you the file, let me know of any issues, remember that the RPM are modified to improve the cooling using the stock cooler, so since you have a different cooler let me know of the results, it should run as cooler as the north pole :)
Click to expand...

hello evolution,, i have an his hd3850 iceq3 turbo 512 mb agp vga card , n i would like to use the latest catalyst 8.8 on my card not the hotfix,, can u help me plz?
 
TheVoice said:
My upgrade miserably failed.. I saved the original bios, deinstalled the drivers, flashed the custom bios Evolution sent to me, and installed the ATI Cat 8.8 (non-hotfix) drivers. The thing did boot up, but the screen was hopelessly corrupted. The CCC showed a GPU clock of 300, and I could hardly move my mouse and click anyting, it all was extremely slow.

I flashed back to the bios I had saved (good tip :) ) and everythings working again. But now Im left with the feeling I can do a lot better..

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Jum, remember that when the card is in 2D Mode, it will run at 300MHz, that's the Powerplay feature and is normal, I found that the issue probably is because the Sapphire card lower it's core voltage at 300MHz while the ATi BIOS I sent you won't. So probably it would cause screen corruption or something. I just finished editing that BIOS and I fixed, now has the same values as the Sapphire BIOS. If you are willing to try again let me know, I already sent it to you. Also monitor your GPU temps, just in case.
 
nrgmania said:
hello evolution,, i have an his hd3850 iceq3 turbo 512 mb agp vga card , n i would like to use the latest catalyst 8.8 on my card not the hotfix,, can u help me plz?
Click to expand...

I sent you the BIOS and the instructions, is the same that I'm using, remember to make a back up of yours (I still having the original one just in case), but try to monitor your PSU 12V rails with Everest and open a benchmark called Furmark, run it at stability mode at window size and then monitor your card temperature and 12V rail values, if they dip below 11V that will cause serious issues.
 
OK.. tried 2nd version. To no avail unfortunately.

When I use winflash, I see that there is two adapters that I could flash. I select the one that is already selected as 'in use', I assume that is ok.

Immediately after I flash I reboot. On boot time I already notice the computer booting with a little sort of hickup, it boots but it seems to need more time to think. When Vista booting starts, I can almost immediately see corruption during my computer loading vista. The black screen showing 'Microsoft corporation', which letters are normally white, seem to have all sorts of colors which also seem to be out of sync (like watching something that is meant to look at with 3D glasses).

Windows loads and shows a relatively normal desktop (a little artefacts) using the standard VGA adapter. The moment I install the normal Cat8.8 drivers (without CCC, I have rivatuner & gpu-Z installed), my screen ends up becoming one big bunch of artifacts again. I can sort of see what Im doing but it obviously is not meant to happen.

But - since this already happens at early vista boot time, I think its not a driver issue but something that is wrong in the bios, in the way it operates the Sapphire card, on the lowest level.

Mind having another look at it?

Cheers & thanks for the effort sofar..
 
nrgmania said:
dude. my system spec is as follows?
Amd barton 3000+ installed on an asus a7n8x deluxe with 2 gb ram and 2 wd hdd set in raid 0 each 500gb so total 1 tera n his hd 3850 iceq3 turbo 512 mb agp n creative xfi sound blaster xtereme gamer sound card n last a 450w psu.
Click to expand...
Does your PSU have at least one PCI-E (6 pin) or are you using 2 x molex to PCI-E power connector? Actually I had a similar problem: AGP bus provides 35W, meanwhile PCI-E - 75W, so in total we get 110W. Keep in mind this card is almost as power hungry as stock HD3870 which consumes 100W+ at peak load. I solved my problem after I bought 6 pin to 8 pin PCI-E 2.0 adapter, which doubled those 75W. You can do the same, but if only your PSU has got 2 x 6 pin factory - made connectors(!), otherwise you are very likely to burn your PSU. But to make sure this is PSU problem try disconnecting one of your HDD's.
 
kniaugaudiskiss said:
Does your PSU have at least one PCI-E (6 pin) or are you using 2 x molex to PCI-E power connector? Actually I had a similar problem: AGP bus provides 35W, meanwhile PCI-E - 75W, so in total we get 110W. Keep in mind this card is almost as power hungry as stock HD3870 which consumes 100W+ at peak load. I solved my problem after I bought 6 pin to 8 pin PCI-E 2.0 adapter, which doubled those 75W. You can do the same, but if only your PSU has got 2 x 6 pin factory - made connectors(!), otherwise you are very likely to burn your PSU. But to make sure this is PSU problem try disconnecting one of your HDD's.
Click to expand...

I have a bluestorm 500 power supply, n I connected the HIS vga card power with a 6-pin connecter, so i dont know if that what u were talking about , n the power connecter for the card requires a 8-pin power connecter? so what to do since evolution sent me a modified bios,, i dont know if i should go for it n flash the bios n it wont coz any artifacts n stuff?
 
The issue is with his Sapphire card, not with the HIS card. I've been investigation through the net and I found people claiming that their Sapphire card came with the latest version of the BIOS which has the 9505 Device ID. I'll try to see if I can get one. Don't worry nrgmania, the BIOS I sent you is the same that I'm using and I have no issues, that's why I don't understand why the Sapphire is having issues.

The HD 3850 AGP cards only needs 1 PCI-E power connector, doesn't need anymore, the HD 3870 at stock will consume up to 106W in best case scenario, 75W comes from the PCI-E 6 pin cable, and 35W comes from the AGP, is more than enough. But also you have to make sure where the PCI-E cable is taking power from, if it comes from the same Power regulator which feeds the first 12V rail and it's fully loaded, will cause issues. You can do some online research or review about your PSU and see.
 
I've finally bought the accelero s1 rev2 heatsink and got it installed yesterday as soon as it arrived. Damn, I've should have done it earlier, now with a 120mm 1800rpm fan my load temps in furmark hover around 50C while idle is usually 35-36C. Whenever you guys were swapping heatsinks or reapplying ceramic mix did anyone of you notice the name on the ram chips? The ram chips in my sapphire 3850 are made by Qimonda, which explains oc limit on the ram for me. Well anyways so far I've been able to take the core up to 885 and that was 5 min furmark stable (8xaa). Anything past that screen freezes and the gpu recovery tool kicks in. Oddly enough for some reason I do not have core speed cap at 866 despite that my bios is one of the core speed capped ones. Gona run some cod4, want to see how that 885 core holds up :)
 
Since your sig indicates you have a flashed Sapphire card, would you mind sharing what you exactly did to flash it, and what you flashed it with? (Or what did you modify in the BIOS editor?)
 
I just modified the 3d core / mem clock speeds alongside with 3d core voltage using RBE editor. I did not flash the card using unlocked bios or anything of that sort.
 
Would you mind sharing what your main RBE table (the one showing the various clock speed/voltage profiles) looks like? Would like to try the same settings. I have no idea which voltages I should/could apply.

Thanks :)
 
This thread is absolutely massive... I'm thinking about buying myself a 3850 to replace my X800 XT PE and extend the life of my computer one last time (Went from P4 Northwood @ 2.8 ghz, 1 GB DDR, to Opteron 165 @ 2.8 ghz and 2 GB DDR), but I'm having a hard time trying to find out what problems still persist with this card and which ones have been solved.

Are all the driver issues resolved now with the ATI AGP hotfixes? I've been hearing from some people that it depends on which company you buy the card from and other people tell me it has been completely fixed. What's the deal here? If it makes any difference, I'm looking at buying one from Sapphire or Powercolor.
 
TheVoice said:
Would you mind sharing what your main RBE table (the one showing the various clock speed/voltage profiles) looks like? Would like to try the same settings. I have no idea which voltages I should/could apply.

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

setting%203D%20volts.png


Here's the guide that I used.
 
TheVoice said:
My upgrade miserably failed.. I saved the original bios, deinstalled the drivers, flashed the custom bios Evolution sent to me, and installed the ATI Cat 8.8 (non-hotfix) drivers. The thing did boot up, but the screen was hopelessly corrupted. The CCC showed a GPU clock of 300, and I could hardly move my mouse and click anyting, it all was extremely slow.
Click to expand...

Not sure about the corruption... maybe bad voltages... like you are testing now ^^. Also it is possible they changed the board design.. what is your current BIOS info?

If this slow thing happens it means the ATI drivers don't trust something about the BIOS and themselves... so they turn off hardware acceleration. The ATI drivers keep detailed card info in the registry and the drivers also know roughly what the BIOS info/ID's are valid.

Flash your card with a new BIOS with 9505.
Uninstall the drivers.
Boot to safe mode
Go into device manager... show hidden devices
-delete the Video cards (including any grey ones)
-delete monitors as well for good measure (including any grey ones)
Run driver cleaner.
Reboot.
Install the drivers.

I left my voltages the same as the original ATI 9505 AGP BIOS... but PowerColour probably overvolt the card anyway (someone tested it with a volt meter (Imperious I think))

Mine is over clocked pretty heavily... You should be safe and start out with the standard 300 669's... when you do overclock later keep the card so it is under 70*C under load at room temp in FUR to be safe.
RBE1.jpg

RBE2.jpg

RBE3.jpg

thrashing%20the%20GPU.jpg
 
Don't mess around with anything besides the clock info 3 spaces; when I tried to adjust 2d, 2d/3d voltage my card became unstable right after I launched any game. Also if you have sapphire qimonda chips the maximum safe speed you should run them at is 1000hz, any more will lead to instability during 3d apps. Max effective core voltage reached through bios is 1.327, that maximum is hardlocked meaning volt mods are needed if you want to supply even more voltage to the core. At 1.327V maximum core speed on average should be around 260+ peaking at 270. Anyways a 25% overclock on the core is nothing to joke about and during my fraps run through bog level at 1280x1040 everything maxed I was getting 42 avg fps which puts it above 3870 and 2900xt and just below the 9600gt according to guru3d vga charts.
 
hmm.. after almost bricking the card (I got it working again), 3 more questions:
- Which flash program are you guys using to flash your cards with modded BIOSes?
- In Winflash, the 1st adapter is the RIALTO bridge chip and the 2nd adapter is the actual 3850 chip. I understood its there cause this is basically a PCI Express card with an AGP bridge attached. But for flashing - what does this exactly mean? Always flash the 2nd device? (Which is device 1, the rialto chip is device 0 I think)
- I have heard that RBE can have an issue with the calculation of checksums. Is the 3850AGP card affected by this issue? Because checksum variations can cause the card to revert to low frequency mode because of the BIOS not being properly recognized by the driver (and then itll be running at 300 Mhz etc)

Wondering how you guys went about this stuff with the sapphire cards!

Thanks again!
 
I have used winflash and the dos one, they both work. (winflash needs your catalyst drivers installed) (dos one needs a bootdisk)
You can't flash the first device, yes it is the bridge chip.
No issue.

Are you guys using these..
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/...rer=&model=HD+3850+AGP&interface=&memSize=512
or do you have newer ones? Because the Voltages are all 1.214 in the all the BIOS, I suspect the powercolor board manages the voltages automatically, when set to 1.214 someone measured it at 1.3xx anyway... so be careful.. maybe measure the sapphire with a volt meter

DeadSkull.. yes, I think my max was 32*27=864, so I just did 31*27=837
 
Winflash doesn't need CCC to be installed, and yes, before you flash, you have to make sure to select the second adapter, the one which is in use with the red asterisk. All HD 3850 have the same 1.214 (Something like that) V core values. The latest Winflash doesn't have issues with the checksum, it worked fine with me.
 
When I used winflash, it would not flash my card without ati drivers installed. I did not try reinstalling it after uninstalling the drivers though.
 
Spathi said:
I have used winflash and the dos one, they both work. (winflash needs your catalyst drivers installed) (dos one needs a bootdisk)
You can't flash the first device, yes it is the bridge chip.
No issue.

Are you guys using these..
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/...rer=&model=HD+3850+AGP&interface=&memSize=512
or do you have newer ones? Because the Voltages are all 1.214 in the all the BIOS, I suspect the powercolor board manages the voltages automatically, when set to 1.214 someone measured it at 1.3xx anyway... so be careful.. maybe measure the sapphire with a volt meter

DeadSkull.. yes, I think my max was 32*27=864, so I just did 31*27=837
Click to expand...


Nope, just constantly modifying over my original sapphire bios.
 
I give up.. I tried two different stock bioses, different RBE versions, flashing using winflash and atiflash. I guess Vista is the culprit here, checking the bios content more intensively than XP does.

If I modify ANY setting (clock speed, voltage) on my stock BIOS, my card is running at 300 MHZ and Vista reports the card is having a problem and cannot start. Tried reinstalling drivers etc, nothing works :-(

So only Rivatuner for me unfortunately.
 
Are you sure Vista is the culprit here? It could be the Sapphire agp drivers that double check the bios, are you modifying your original bios or using another cars bios?
 
I am only modifying the stock bios (as you indicated, actually). Drivers are the apg-hotfix_vista32_67245-cat8.8. Which drivers are you using?
 
Sorry if this is a stupid question; I tried to read the entire thread but gave up.
Question: Do you need to be running Vista and DX10 to run the 3850agp or will it work in a XP DX9 machine?
 
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