The HD 3850 AGP User Experience

AndonSage said:
Congratulations! Now you just need to change your sig :)
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Thanks AndonSage for your observation! Now my sig is updated. I'm having so much fun. I'm getting COD4 soon, I hope I can play it @ 1600 x 1200. Wow graphics looks so good! Even the fire looks real!
 
My pc doesn't have a case and it's sitting right on my table and look at this gfx card scorch itself. Overclocking this beast with the stock cooler will make you think twice about doing it. Specially when it's sitting inside your case, dumping all that heat to all your components:D

 
Just got the sapphire 3850 agp card yesterday.

Runs great, using the march 10th hotfix from sapphire's website (8.3). No problems at all.

However there are two MAJORS minuses for this with this card so far:

1) Too many resolutions missing. I've tried reinstalling my monitor driver, setting things up in Powerstrip, however it is annoying that by default a lot of resolutions like 1440x900 do not have refresh rates higher than 60hz, I would need to force it through Powerstrip to get it working.

2) Maybe it's just me but this card is 2x blurrier than my previous x1950pro card. I have the king of all CRTs, the fw900, and it is SHARP, especially with BNC cabling, it is as sharp as things could have gotten with my x1950pro. Maybe it's my luck but this sapphire card is really blurry compared to the older card. I will swap this one with a HIS 3850 agp and see if the card's output quality improves.
 
christpunchersg said:
2) Maybe it's just me but this card is 2x blurrier than my previous x1950pro card. I have the king of all CRTs, the fw900, and it is SHARP, especially with BNC cabling, it is as sharp as things could have gotten with my x1950pro. Maybe it's my luck but this sapphire card is really blurry compared to the older card. I will swap this one with a HIS 3850 agp and see if the card's output quality improves.
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If you do, please let us know the results!

Thanks.
 
horrorshow said:
If you do, please let us know the results!

Thanks.
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Alright seems like I have mildly improve the blurry text/dark tint situation with the sapphire. I used an older version of ATI Tray Tools instead of the latest one (the beta one) and everything seems to be sharper, however still not as sharp as my powercolor x1950pro. The HIS 3850 agp should be here in a week's time, I'll test it out and give you guys an update.
 
christpunchersg said:
Alright seems like I have mildly improve the blurry text/dark tint situation with the sapphire. I used an older version of ATI Tray Tools instead of the latest one (the beta one) and everything seems to be sharper, however still not as sharp as my powercolor x1950pro. The HIS 3850 agp should be here in a week's time, I'll test it out and give you guys an update.
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I had the exact same problem. The remedy - do a forced install of regular ATI 8.3s. After I did this (installing the driver first and then the CCC), I had 1440 x 900 again and the image is just as crisp as that of the 1950 Pro. I have had no BSODs, game crashes, or other program crashing of any kind. Very stable. However, as a rule of thumb, I don't like doing forced installs and hope that the 8.4s are 3850 AGP friendly. We'll see...
 
Ejay said:
I had the exact same problem. The remedy - do a forced install of regular ATI 8.3s. After I did this (installing the driver first and then the CCC), I had 1440 x 900 again and the image is just as crisp as that of the 1950 Pro. I have had no BSODs, game crashes, or other program crashing of any kind. Very stable. However, as a rule of thumb, I don't like doing forced installs and hope that the 8.4s are 3850 AGP friendly. We'll see...
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Which 8.3? I tried installing the driver using the control panel method however it's not stable for me.
 
Just installed xixou's "8.4" driver, it seems to work great, everything is smoother, maybe text is slightly even better now. Still waiting for the HIS 3850.
 
If anyone is looking to sell their used 3850 AGP for a decent price, please PM me.

I'd like to pick one up for the new Folding@Home GPU2 client, so buggy gaming drivers, blurry 2d, etc. don't concern me.

 
I just received my HIS Radeon HD 3850 ICEQ AGP card and it won't boot. It came with a PCI-E 6 pin to Molex converter, (The card have a 8 Pin PCI-E connector but it fits good with the 6 Pin version) and the fans would start spinning, but no signal would come from the card, also the card wouldn't even get hot, cold as a dead body. I used the molex adapter, I connected it through two different 12V lanes and no avail, also I connected the card directly to the PSU using the PCI-E cable and nothing either. I cleared the CMOS, I switched memory sticks, this motherboards speak when there's an issue, and It would say "System Failed CPU Test)". I connected back my GeCube and everything back to normal, seems that this card is DOA to me. I just requested an RMA, since I gotta work now, I will ship the card tomorrow or wednesday.

Funny thing, the card came with a Crossfire bridge loll
 
wow, first time Ive heard of someone getting a totally dead card out of the box.. Thought HIS would test the card before sending out?? Very sorry youve had this happen.
 
I don't know if that's an issue specific by my motherboard since both PC's has the same P4P800-E deluxe. Usually incompatability occurs specially on non Intel chipsets, There's a step that I had missed during troubleshooting? Any hints let me know, it's frustrating. :(
 
first thing Id do is go to a friends house and put it into another machine... rma's suck but a dead card sucks even more.. but Im sure youve already thought of this.
 
evolucion8 said:
I just received my HIS Radeon HD 3850 ICEQ AGP card and it won't boot. It came with a PCI-E 6 pin to Molex converter, (The card have a 8 Pin PCI-E connector but it fits good with the 6 Pin version) and the fans would start spinning, but no signal would come from the card, also the card wouldn't even get hot, cold as a dead body. I used the molex adapter, I connected it through two different 12V lanes and no avail, also I connected the card directly to the PSU using the PCI-E cable and nothing either. I cleared the CMOS, I switched memory sticks, this motherboards speak when there's an issue, and It would say "System Failed CPU Test)". I connected back my GeCube and everything back to normal, seems that this card is DOA to me. I just requested an RMA, since I gotta work now, I will ship the card tomorrow or wednesday.
Funny thing, the card came with a Crossfire bridge loll
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Same thing to me, the solution was to use the adapter from two (4 pin) molex to pci-e 6 pìn. If yu use a pci-e wire directly from the power the card doesn´t turn on. If you don´t have a 8-pin pci-e wire, the card will need the power of two molex connected to the adapter of 6 pin pci-e.
 
That's strange, because my X1950XT is connected directly through the PCI-E 6 pin cable and it works, and that GPU sucks more power than a HD 3850. When I installed the HIS 3850, I used that convertor with 2 different 12V and nothing worked, but I noticed that the first two 12V rails are higher than 21A while the third one is under 21, so may be I will give it a try later with the first two 12V rails and see, I don't expect nothing though...
 
Isn't the 3850 agp a 8 pin pci-e card?

I have a powersupply with a few 6 pin pci-e connectors, each with an attachable extra 2 pin , so joined together each can become a 8 pin. Should I bother using the 2 molex -> 8 pin connector or just connect my 8pin connector to the card from the PSU?
 
Sapphire has a agp 3850 with a 8 pin connector..

theres both agp and pci-e cards now christpunchersg
 
Yes I know these 3850s use 8pin connectors. I'm asking about whether one should use the 2 molex -> 8 pin PCI-E adapter or a PCI-E 8pin connector straight from a powersupply.
 
I tested the card with the two 12V rails with the highest Amperage rate and nothing happen either, I will send it back for replacement tomorrow. Also I noticed that the card had in the backside, some square shaped glue residues, like if it had some stickers removed from the back. Hope is was just a dud and not an incompatability problems, something that is very rare in Intel chipsets.
 
Just got my zalman vf900:D

For reference stock cooler running it's fan at 100%,stock clocks 669/829 at 82C using furmark.

The vf900 is connected straight to a mb fan header running 100%.
Zalman Idle
zalmanidlekp8.jpg


Zalman Load
zalmanloadcy8.jpg


Not bad for such a tiny little cooler:D The ramsinks could need some improvements, as it would probably lower the temps down a bit due to ram and core sharing the same pcb. Subtract -10C from the result above for casual gaming .
 
LordVampyre said:
well, 8.4's are out.. but not on Sapphire's site as yet. Anyone brave enough to try them??
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lol.. let me guess they dont install for the HD 3850 AGP?

goodluck force installing them and not getting any problems with ccc or breaking games
 
yeppers.. you got that right NeverLift!! had to force feed the suckers... as usual ...sigh....

havent done CCC yet perhaps after dinner.. not quite brave enough...

One thing though, Obliv looks better than ever! Even PainKiller looks better. Im watching a avi file and its very nice. so Ive noticed an improvement in IQ ... eheheh FPS Doug cracks me up...

So, in the 90min or so seems to be better than the 8.2 but a drag cant just install them. Atleast Im getting use to force feeding them.
 
LordVampyre said:
had to force feed the suckers... as usual ...sigh....
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After what I went through to get the 8.3 drivers installed, I think I'll just stick with them. I didn't see anything listed in the Windows XP section that made me think I had to have the 8.4 drivers. I do recommend that anyone on the 8.2 drivers upgrade to 8.3 or later, simply for the "Maintain Aspect Ratio" option, although it looks like you'll need to wait for 8.5 for the Powerplay fix to be incorporated.

Like a sports team that doesn't do well, where people say "There's always next year...," with the ATI Drivers it's "There's always next month..."

I'm buying a new computer system in September or thereabouts (after the new ATI & nVidia cards are out, and the Q3 price reduction of the Q9550 to the $316 price point), so at least I only have a few more months of this driver sh.. stuff.
 
The new Cat 8.4 package did not install for me, received the "no driver found" message and had to backtrack to the DirectX Hotpatch driver then install the Cat 8.4 CCC-only download
 
cawalton said:
The new Cat 8.4 package did not install for me, received the "no driver found" message and had to backtrack to the DirectX Hotpatch driver then install the Cat 8.4 CCC-only download
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Ditto - stay away from the 8.4s...they do not work...no love yet from ATI for the 3850 AGP stepchild.
 
The drivers do work, just have to hand install them ... and I do have the say theres quite a bit of improvement..
 
vista ones worked flawlessly.. and even in vista have noticed a increased IQ.. colors are much richer even more so than with the 8.2's
 
AndonSage said:
So just download the hotfix file and the 8.4 CCC file, then uninstall prior driver & CCC and then install the 8.4 hotfix then 8.4 CCC. Is that correct?
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Uninstall the driver via device manager and use ati utility to uninstall ccc. Reboot into safe mode and wipe the left overs with driver cleaner pro. Then install the 8.4 hotfix. No driver forcing required:D

Official Cat 8.4 was fast in benchies but sucked in the witcher and CoH OF. It felt like I was running my x800xt. It had a lot of pauses etc. I have to agree with lordvampyre though, the image quality is better than that of 8.3

Catalyst 8.4 hotfix was fairly the same with benchies to that of the driver on the sapphire cd, but the frame rates are much smoother. IQ that you have to judge for yourselves though. Hopefully ati will keep releasing drivers that would actually install like this one.
 
Turdpike said:
Uninstall the driver via device manager and use ati utility to uninstall ccc.
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I've always used the ATI Uninstall Utility in Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel. Doesn't that remove the driver?

Turdpike said:
Reboot into safe mode and wipe the left overs with driver cleaner pro.
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Yep, I always do that.

Turdpike said:
Then install the 8.4 hotfix. No driver forcing required:D
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The hotfix contains the CCC, then?
 
AndonSage said:
The hotfix contains the CCC, then?
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Yup it's the whole package. It even tag our cards as HD3850 AGP in device manager.

I will put my card to it's paces today at 810/1000 and see if it passes all my games stable. So far it benches at 836 core but failed WiC. If it indeed runs stable at 810 all day long today, then we can call this the bestest bang for your buck card for agp systems.:D It was fairly a simple tweak as long as the card is cooled well.

new2cy3.jpg

new3av1.jpg

newhi7.jpg
 
Mega666 said:
The Sapphire and probably all other hd 3850 agp drivers have no support of most opengl driver extensions. Used cat 8.3, 8.4, cd drivers, cd drivers with patch. Opened tix with amd, the "fix" is to install manufacturer drivers. : )
Back the card went to new egg.

hd 3850
http://home.carolina.rr.com/ggordon/gl_report.htm


6800gt
http://home.carolina.rr.com/ggordon/6800gl_report.htm
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Ya I already commented on this earlier, the guys over at driverheaven and rage3d seem to be the only tech sites that track this also.

From what I have read and seen reported at Rage3D and Driverheaven the last driver to fully support OpenGL was the cat 7.10 or the 7.12.

Alot the OpenGL demo's and tools are broke with the new drivers and do not work, this also effects game performance or breaks it....
 
Incredible that hardware is getting out that doesn't even have full support of these standard features. Back when it was ATI, in the beginning - drivers were the worst, but I had a great experience with my 9700pro. I guess it's back to garbage drivers again and back to nvidia for me. I just have to wait out the 790i corruption issue. I'm not getting stuck with a junk chipset like that via kt266. It used to be you could buy hardware and not have to worry about crap like this. Now it seems to be everywhere.
 
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