The HD 3850 AGP User Experience

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AndonSage

Gawd
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This thread is for people to post in who have received and are using their ATI Radeon HD 3850 AGP video card. Let us know how it's working and which drivers you used, please. Also total system specs and 3dMark scores if you want, even before & after scores, or game usage.

So far, LordVampyre and God_of_Death mentioned in other threads that their card is installed and running, so I hope they'll post here. My card is expected to arrive Feb 22 and I'll post here after it's installed.
 
i am very happy with the card. all of my games look and play better when compared to my 1950PRO. personally, i think my 1950PRO was defective :p. i ran a few benchies using saphire drivers on the CD. i ran the benchmarks at their default setting. the pics show my 24/7 system o/c and the card is kept at stock.


3Dmark2001

3Dmark2003

3Dmark2005

3Dmark2006

I am sorry that i don't have any numbers from my 1950PRO and yes i know these numbers show that my system is very long on the tooth :D


I played Bioshock, UT3, ET:QW, Q4 and Doom 3 with no problems. I hope to pick up Gears of War and Stalker this weekend. :D
 
I'll have mine this Thursday and I'll post up soon after. I dont' have a X1950 to compare it to for reference either. I do have an old X850XT I can compare it too if your interested. Either way I'll post what my experiences are.
 
Well, I never have used 3dmark anything.. but I downloaded think it was 03 last night and it wouldnt even start up. Guess my system doesnt have something that it needs or ??? It just sat there.

Did get the demo for Bioshock.. OMG absolutely amazing. And its in dx9 not 10. will install it on the vista side of this machine later today and see how it is there. Dont know if I can get into the game or not but wow, and I only went to where the guy/girl? gets gutted and some welder tries to open up the pod that Ive been in. I know, just barely touched it but it was like 2am!
 
LordVampyre said:
Did get the demo for Bioshock.. OMG absolutely amazing. And its in dx9 not 10. will install it on the vista side of this machine later today and see how it is there. Dont know if I can get into the game or not but wow, and I only went to where the guy/girl? gets gutted and some welder tries to open up the pod that Ive been in. I know, just barely touched it but it was like 2am!
Click to expand...

I agree, and I found it very easy to get into. Also a head-up regarding Vista, don't know if you use it or not, but there's a bug in the game where it doesn't hold the V-Sync Enabled/ON Setting and you need to enable it everytime you play. In the full-game Patch 1.1 fixed this. I'm pretty sure the demo had the bug as well.
 
Good to know in reference to Bioshock and V-sync..
Got Doom3 in and patched up no issues and wow.. drop dead beautiful. the lighting is so different than on say the 6800 and the 1950.. very nice.

Went back to Quake 4 .. instead of just putting in the last patch I put in all 3 that are available and yes, in order :) ... got the game to come up and its amazing however, every time that the game saves or I save it, I get a VPU recovery error do I want to send a report to ati? I sent in 3 of them. Got out of the game and temp of GPU was 50.. presently its 45 after about 2 min. Never seen a VPU error .. any ideas? Oh when I had ati tray tools installed it said the speed of my fan was like 19% but all the adjusting area was grayed out. Wish CCC had a way to control the fan :/

so some minor issues here, actually much less than I had with the 1950. (wont even go into those) just looked at CCC and seems temp is croozing around 46. Wonder if thats the real temp.. Oh just saw VPU recover on CCC at least I now know what it is. Just wonder why its happening? and only in quake4.

okay, back to playing :)
 
Perhaps and after market cooler may be in order? Any Ideas by looking at it what would fit?
 
LordVampyre said:
Good to know in reference to Bioshock and V-sync..
Got Doom3 in and patched up no issues and wow.. drop dead beautiful. the lighting is so different than on say the 6800 and the 1950.. very nice.

Went back to Quake 4 .. instead of just putting in the last patch I put in all 3 that are available and yes, in order :) ... got the game to come up and its amazing however, every time that the game saves or I save it, I get a VPU recovery error do I want to send a report to ati? I sent in 3 of them. Got out of the game and temp of GPU was 50.. presently its 45 after about 2 min. Never seen a VPU error .. any ideas? Oh when I had ati tray tools installed it said the speed of my fan was like 19% but all the adjusting area was grayed out. Wish CCC had a way to control the fan :/

so some minor issues here, actually much less than I had with the 1950. (wont even go into those) just looked at CCC and seems temp is croozing around 46. Wonder if thats the real temp.. Oh just saw VPU recover on CCC at least I now know what it is. Just wonder why its happening? and only in quake4.

okay, back to playing :)
Click to expand...

Everyone is saying the IQ is better on this card than the x1950. Isn't it processing the same image, just faster?
 
Sheldog23, think the temps would be alright if the darn fan was going over 19%... I charged up Everest and ALL my temps were way over 100.. and thats very new.. most of them usually run in the 80/90's so looks like heat is an issue. I havent done much reading on the pci-e version of this card perhaps I should. I wasnt even playing a game was doing some surfin..
Not going to look for a after market cooler till I find if this fan is just not being used properly or should indeed be replaced.

Teh ZioN I was able to use much better textures that other cards choked on. So, game looks better cause of the better textures. Lighting is different too. Cant explain it. Might be processing the same image but the results are much different, and much better.

Well, I just dug out my summertime fan and have it blowing on the inside of my case .. lets see motherboard is now 90 down from 112 , cpu is now 111 down from what ever 56C is.. its now 43C Aux is now 93 down from over 110 both seagate drives are 90/91 down from 120 ... so seems I had a nasty little oven..

God of Death... how are your case temps doing? any drastic increase cause of this card?

just checked video card was 49's to oh 56's its now 42.. and thats via CCC
 
no case temp increase. i have 4 120mm fans on the side panel alone. :D current temp of the card is 42C and it hit 50C during Bioshock.

i did not encounter the VPU error in Q4. have you tried updating it using the last big update? i think it's ver 1.4.2 and 267megs big. thats the one i used.


EDIT: and I agree, games do look better for whatever reason. i am not gunna question it. even some of the older games like Doom 3 and Q4 look better.
 
LordVampyre said:
Sheldog23, think the temps would be alright if the darn fan was going over 19%... I charged up Everest and ALL my temps were way over 100.. and thats very new.. most of them usually run in the 80/90's so looks like heat is an issue. I havent done much reading on the pci-e version of this card perhaps I should. I wasnt even playing a game was doing some surfin..
Not going to look for a after market cooler till I find if this fan is just not being used properly or should indeed be replaced.

Teh ZioN I was able to use much better textures that other cards choked on. So, game looks better cause of the better textures. Lighting is different too. Cant explain it. Might be processing the same image but the results are much different, and much better.

Well, I just dug out my summertime fan and have it blowing on the inside of my case .. lets see motherboard is now 90 down from 112 , cpu is now 111 down from what ever 56C is.. its now 43C Aux is now 93 down from over 110 both seagate drives are 90/91 down from 120 ... so seems I had a nasty little oven..

God of Death... how are your case temps doing? any drastic increase cause of this card?

just checked video card was 49's to oh 56's its now 42.. and thats via CCC
Click to expand...

Just curious...what case are you using...with the current generation of video cards, the more airflow the better! However, I find it puzzling that you are seeing this kind of temperature increase over the 1950 Pro. The 3850 is allegedly based on a 55nm process, so it shouldn't run appreciably hotter, although it does have 512 megs of memory and the core is more complex, which may somewhat negate the energy signature advantage from the 55nm microarchitecture.
 
Ejay said:
Just curious...what case are you using...with the current generation of video cards, the more airflow the better! However, I find it puzzling that you are seeing this kind of temperature increase over the 1950 Pro. The 3850 is allegedly based on a 55nm process, so it shouldn't run appreciably hotter, although it does have 512 megs of memory and the core is more complex, which may somewhat negate the energy signature advantage from the 55nm microarchitecture.
Click to expand...


but the HSF on the saphire cards throws the hot air back inside the case :mad:

my 1950PRO shot it out :D
 
God of Death you got it.... theres no real exit for the hot air.. shoot I cant even tell which way the air flow is in the card Im going to assume it goes from back to front and suppose to be out the case.

What Ive done is taken a fan and left the side off the Antec case.. I played 90min of quake4 with NO issues... saved just fine none of those VPU errors. and wow.. Quake 4 looks so amazing. Deep dark rich colors and the flow of it is incredible. Will have to see what my frame rate is soon.

Just for a giggle I also reinstalled the drivers from the disk. A just incase type of thing.

Ejay, I think the problem is the card isnt running fast enough to send the hot air out of the case.. its staying in it and creating an oven. All my temps now are cpu 45C, aux 91, seagate 88, seagate 88.. and on CCC says its 45C for the video card..

So, need to find a way to increase the fan speed, see if that will take care of it... get a 3d party cooler.. or just keep going with the fan.. which I dont want to do cause its too loud. At least this isnt a rma problem yet.. who knows this case is like 8 years old.. might be about time for a new one
 
I think it might be your card. I've been reading around and most people are saying the cards fan kicks in and gets a tad noisy at higher temps. Wierd. You said you installed ATI tray tools, have you tried just the regular ATI tool? Thats what I use and there is tab that lets you set the fan speed to 100% or whatever perameters you want.
 
okay thanks Sheldog23, Ill try that...

I dont know if Im just over reacting to the temp of it. Last night when I turned off the machine the card was really warm but got cool very fast. Maybe its the way its suppose to be?

What sort of sucks is Im about due for a new install of xp .. all this installing and uninstalling has taken it tole... oh well.. I usually do it every 3 to 4 months and Im due.
 
LordVampyre said:
Well, I never have used 3dmark anything.. but I downloaded think it was 03 last night and it wouldnt even start up. Guess my system doesnt have something that it needs or ??? It just sat there.

Did get the demo for Bioshock.. OMG absolutely amazing. And its in dx9 not 10. will install it on the vista side of this machine later today and see how it is there. Dont know if I can get into the game or not but wow, and I only went to where the guy/girl? gets gutted and some welder tries to open up the pod that Ive been in. I know, just barely touched it but it was like 2am!
Click to expand...

Well, I got my Sapphire 3850 today, and using the "raw" and might I add immature drivers on the Sapphire CD, was not able to run either 3dMark 03 or 06 - intitial splash screen just sits there. I was able to run the OpenGL "Fur Benchmark" you can find here:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1717

On a 3.2 Northy at stock, and 2 gigs of RAM on an Intel D865 PERLL motherboard, the 3850 shames my VisionTek XGE 1950 Pro:

XGE 1950 Pro @ 1440 X 900-

FPS min - 22
FPS max - 36
FPS avg. - 26

o3Marks = 1584

Sapphire 3850 @ 1680 x 1050

FPS min - 34
FPS max - 52
FPS avg. - 40

o3Marks = 2420

That's a 53% improvement for the o3Marks score...Wow! I wish I could have compared apples to apples, resolution-wise, but the crud driver on the CD does not provide the option of 1440 x 900 resolution on my WS 223BW Samsung monitor - else the difference would have been even higher!.

With regard to temperatures, by interior case temps by zone only went up maybe 4 to 5 degrees F, with the processor zone staying unchanged at around 93 degrees F (ambient of 72 degrees F), at light load (web surfing). The load temps are not significantly higher than those for my 1950 Pro, topping out at aroung 112 degrees F for the processor and around 102 degrees F for the other sensor zones on my MB. I'll try downloading ATI Tool or some other monitoring program to check the GPU temps later tonight. Oh, my case is an Antec 640B with a 120mm at the rear, a 92mm in the CAG side panel tube, an 80 in the side panel over the GPU, and a 80mm in front of the hard drive.

Physically, the card is the same length as XGE VisionTek 1950 Pro and appears to be the same height.

If Sapphire and ATI (AMD) can get there driver act together, this may turn out ot be a really great card for the AGP crowd. It does show a lot of promise...
 
nice furry little proggy. i had the same problems with the 3Dmark benchmarks until I applied some hotfix on their updates section.

I also ran the Furry benchmark.

default settings @ 1440x900 i got: FPS Min:45 FPS Max:70 FPS Avg:53 Score: 3191 o3Marks

Furry @ 1440x900




default settings @ 1680x1050 i got: FPS Min:35 FPS Max:60 FPS Avg:44 Score: 2637 o3Marks

Furry @ 1680x1050


EDIT: you don't need to change the resolution on you monitor. just pick the resolution on the Furry benchy and it will do the rest.
 
Thanks for the link. Currently, I'm getting a "404" error for all four mirrors, even with my firewall disengaged (as suggested on the web site). Will try later on this.

I tried running "Fur" at 1440 x 900 and although the "progression" line was not displayed during the test, it nontheless cranked out a score:

FPS min - 45
FPS max - 81
FPS avg - 58

Score: 3497 o3Marks

So at comparable screen resolutions, the 3850 thumps the 1950 by a whopping 120%. I'll try later to download the hotfix. The drivers are the only thing holding this thing back...but unless this issue is addressed soon, I suspect there will be a lot of RMAs.
 
Ejay said:
Thanks for the link. Currently, I'm getting a "404" error for all four mirrors, even with my firewall disengaged (as suggested on the web site). Will try later on this.
Click to expand...

I tried the links also, and have the same problem. So it's not just you.

My new card just arrived :D I'm going to let it warm up first, before installing, though. It's below 20 here and the card is colllllllddddd.
 
I got mine last night and installed it. Went pretty smoothly I think. Just FYI ATI tool v.26 didn't work with it. It was running about 41C and didn't seem to get hot at all.

I didn't have a lot of time to mess too much with anything but FEAR and COD2 ran great with settings on high. I couldn't get Rep. Commandos to work though. I'll download 3Dmark tonight and mess with some other stuff this weekend. I'm really curious on how well this thing will do in COD4 or UT3.
 
AndonSage said:
I tried the links also, and have the same problem. So it's not just you.

My new card just arrived :D I'm going to let it warm up first, before installing, though. It's below 20 here and the card is colllllllddddd.
Click to expand...

I eventuallly got to the link correctly and managed to pull the hot fix down. I just 'googled' "3dMark" and "hotfix" and was able to get in through one of the forum links - didn't write down the link. You might try the following:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/3DMark_And_PCMark_Unified_Hotfix_d5802.html

My 3dMark 03 scores in going from the 1950 Pro to the 3850, went from 13718 to 25818 - Whoa - huge increase! (88%) The 3dMark 06 scores were respectible but not as jaw-dropping as the 03 test - went from 3613 to 4560. (26%)

Just hope Sapphire and ATI/AMD get WHQL drivers out soon for the 3850 AGP so that we can optimize the card's power. Until then, the lack of full utilization of the card may dampen sales as users reveal unoptimized results.
 
Ejay said:
I eventuallly got to the link correctly and managed to pull the hot fix down. I just 'googled' "3dMark" and "hotfix" and was able to get in through one of the forum links - didn't write down the link. You might try the following:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/3DMark_And_PCMark_Unified_Hotfix_d5802.html

My 3dMark 03 scores in going from the 1950 Pro to the 3850, went from 13718 to 25818 - Whoa - huge increase! (88%) The 3dMark 06 scores were respectible but not as jaw-dropping as the 03 test - went from 3613 to 4560. (26%)

Just hope Sapphire and ATI/AMD get WHQL drivers out soon for the 3850 AGP so that we can optimize the card's power. Until then, the lack of full utilization of the card may dampen sales as users reveal unoptimized results.
Click to expand...

Also you should overclock your CPU because is bottlenecking considerably your videocard.
 
evolucion8 said:
Also you should overclock your CPU because is bottlenecking considerably your videocard.
Click to expand...

Yes I know...unfortunately its an Intel D865 PERLL MB, known for its stability, but lack of overclocking options...well, I can go up about 4%...just don't know what that would give me, but I may try.
 
That 06 score was depressing. I've hit over 8k with my 1950pro... I pray that I hit 10k not 6k.. Where is the bottle neck in your system, cuz something is robbing that 3850 of some performance.
 
I think what the 3dmark scores are showing is the actual bottlenecking of the card.

With 3dmark 03 is showing a big increase, because the old procs are enough to handle that workload.

With 3dmark 06, not so much. More of a workload. This is what I was afraid of.

I would be getting this card in a heartbeat, but I believe its finally time to do a full upgrade. It was fun while it lasted.
 
Teh_ZioN said:
I think what the 3dmark scores are showing is the actual bottlenecking of the card.

With 3dmark 03 is showing a big increase, because the old procs are enough to handle that workload.

With 3dmark 06, not so much. More of a workload. This is what I was afraid of.

I would be getting this card in a heartbeat, but I believe its finally time to do a full upgrade. It was fun while it lasted.
Click to expand...

Considering I got higher than that on the last gen tech... I would not say this is the case at all.. .either he is running at AGP 1x or 4x or something else is bottle necking it. His CPU was at 3.8ghz... Mine at 3.9ghz and the 1950Pro highly oc'd pull mid 8k runs.
 
Sunin said:
That 06 score was depressing. I've hit over 8k with my 1950pro... I pray that I hit 10k not 6k.. Where is the bottle neck in your system, cuz something is robbing that 3850 of some performance.
Click to expand...

But which CPU did you used to reach such scores? It must be heavily overclocked then. Because there's no Pentium 4 that can allow such high score with a X1950PRO, with my P4 EE at 3.73GHz and the X1950XT, I never was able to go above 5,000 in 3DMark06, and my card is overclocked and it's faster.
 
evolucion8 said:
But which CPU did you used to reach such scores? It must be heavily overclocked then. Because there's no Pentium 4 that can allow such high score, with my P4 EE at 3.73GHz and this videocard, I never was able to go above 5,000 in 3DMark06, and my card is overclocked and is faster.
Click to expand...

The rig is the bottom one on my sig... I'll dig up a jpeg if I still have em.
 
Yeah looking at it I'm wondering if I messed up my sig... so long ago did I bench that... it may have been 05 and not 06
 
Sunin said:
Yeah looking at it I'm wondering if I messed up my sig... so long ago did I bench that... it may have been 05 and not 06
Click to expand...

That must be then, In 3Dmark05 I scored over 7,784 with my P4 EE at stock and the X1950XT, now I score over 10,384 and before I format, I used to score over 10,5XX something, Just weird, I'm thinkin to buy that HD 3850, but not yet :(
 
Now I'm stuck trying to decide on whether I should upgrade my aging 939 system, save some money, or just go ahead and move onto a new system.
 
Woot! The card is working in my system :) I guess I have the requisite amps on the 12V line. I used the drivers from the included CD.

I ran 3dMark06 before I switched cards. My X850 XT PE 256 scored 2157. The new HD 3850 AGP 512 scored 4737. That's a 119.6% increase! :)

I do have a couple of questions... The CD installed something called Hydravision, anyone know what that is? Also, in the CCC ATI Overdrive section (which I haven't unlocked yet), the Requested Clock Settings show: GPU Clock 669MHz and Memory Clock 829MHz. However, at the bottom, the Current Clock Settings show: GPU Clock 300MHz and Memory Clock 829Mhz. Does anyone know if the card is actually running the GPU Clock at 669 or 300? The slider for the Requested GPU Clock starts at 300, if that means anything.
 
probably 300mhz in 2d mode and 699 in 3d mode...
 
Teh_ZioN said:
I think what the 3dmark scores are showing is the actual bottlenecking of the card.

With 3dmark 03 is showing a big increase, because the old procs are enough to handle that workload.

With 3dmark 06, not so much. More of a workload. This is what I was afraid of.

I would be getting this card in a heartbeat, but I believe its finally time to do a full upgrade. It was fun while it lasted.
Click to expand...

Good conjecture and probably pretty much on target. It is what it is. The bios in my D865 MB is set for 8X AGP, by the way. I do have a lot of stuff running in the background, but it is all stuff I need, e.g. AVG antivirus, WebRoot Spy Sweeper, Disk Keeper, etc., etc. And, at the same time, there are limitations with regard to what 3DMark is designed for, and these results should be taken with a grain (or pound) of salt.

This card should really shine for AMD dual core and Opteron processors that still reside on AGP motherboards. You've just got to ask yourself which games you play and how much disposable income you have. I doubt seriously, considering the rough time the latest generation of CPUs and GPUs are having with Crysis, that my ole P4 box will ever be able to run Crysis, or games like it, well enough to justify the purchase. But I have two other PCIe machines with 8800s for that.

However, there are a lot of other games out there that are now perhaps playable that I have heretofore declined to load in this box because the 1950 Pro couldn't deliver both acceptable visual quality and framerates, given the cpu limitations. We need some forum posters to come forward and inform us which games are working well on their machines- with the 3850 - games that were not playable with lesser cards. Some games are very cpu dependent, others gpu.

As I have mentioned before, the real deal-killer is the drivers. For instance, for the Samung "Magic Tune Premium" LCD monitor software to work, it needs WHQL drivers (or drivers with at least identifiable vendor codes), And since this card isn't deliverable at the moment with these kinds of drivers (Vista may be an exception as the Sapphire web site now has them for this OS), there are probably all sorts of driver-related problems that await the unwary purchaser, at least for XP users. I'll probably keep the card if decent drivers are available soon. nVidia had a rough start too with regard to their 8800 series drivers, but this card has been out long enough in the PCIe variants, that this shouldn't be the problem it is.

Because of the driver situation...if money is tight and you are trying extend the lifetime of your AGP system, and you already have a 1950 Pro, I would definitely wait...or start saving for a complete new PCIe build.
 
Ejay, how about we wait for newer drivers before calling the 3850 agp a failure. how many people are running a sammy monitor with the magic software?


i have ZERO problems with this card.
 
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