Radeon 3850 AGP Plus Single-Core CPU

[itdoesntmatter]

What an awesome article.
I told a friend who said, pfff, who still uses AGP.

I had to disagree hugely, firstly it is an interesting evolution and analysis and secondly people do still use AGP!

I moved from AGP to PCI-E very recently due to a blown motherboard (sad sad day) but I had a 7900GS and XP2500, got me through FEAR and HL2 with no issues whatsoever. Oblivion was good on it too.
Still it is fantastically refreshing to read an article like this and many thanks for putting it together.

Next one should be just as interesting a read.
(says the man with a 939 4400X2 and 8800GT)
Oh how being behind the times is fun

 

[caskachan]

I just hope they Would go forward and review this card on the most powerfull AGP mobo they could find, like theres these AGP with Socket AM2 and DDR2 mobos from biostar, it would be interesting to see how a black edition 6600+ 4 gigs ram would cope up with this card, just for the luls

 

[_Soulless_]

Good review there.. However, you might want to take a look at this: http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=31542
This drivers really fix a Lot of the problems found in the main ones that were designed for the PCIe. Still, what about some intel processors there too, like pentium dual cores to match those X2? keep up the good works =)

 

[johnbilicki]

"will the slow 2.0 GHz clock speed of the X2 3800+ bottleneck the games even more than the 2.2 GHz Athlon 3400+"

Come on guys WTF are you talking about? For goodness sakes anyone can up the CPU a mere 200MHz.

Plus anyone who is serious enough to read websites like Toms Hardware who owned a socket 939 obviously spent the money to upgrade to a dual core or went to a new platform.

I have two socket 939 systems both of which sport dual core CPUs (4400/AGP and Opteron 185/PCI-E). Both perform decently in games even at high settings and resolution. Isn't this a rewrite of an earlier article? Where are the X2 socket 939 CPUs for the review? I haven't had an Intel CPU since a 2.26/533 processor so from what I've read I can imagine they don't exactly let you drop in an older dual-core CPU in to a socket 478 or earlier versions of 775s. Besides I can get my opty to 3GHz if the FPS got as bad as what benchmarks you guys posted. Did you guys tweak the system and disable things like virtual memory?

 

[bf2142-rules-ok]

Yes good Article.But why has this article been highlighted as a TOP PICK on the home page a couple of weeks ago, disapppear, then reappear today as yet again a top pick.Shouldn't it be PART 2!

 

[Guest]

My rig: PIII 700 ATI Rage. HDD 80GB 1GB RAM SDRAM. DVD+-. Still working good...using only for websurf and email... =) 10 yrs old PC

 

[james2k50]

Hello,

It was interesting to read this article and I was surprised to see a new video card again being manufactured for the AGP bus. I'd been reviewing the Sapphire 3850 AGP for the past few days and not surprisingly are seeing mixed results.
My system is a socket 478 and I know this spells ancient or more like prehistoric. The processor is a 3 GHz Prescott with HT enabled, the motherboard an Asus P4P800 SE that is very overclockable in every aspect. This is a very good motherboard for this socket and really best known for its overclock ability. I can overclock this processor to 3.8 GHz and is stable while attaining DDR 400 with low latencies at 2-3-4-5. I have 3 Gigs OCZ PC 3200, running in dual channel DDR 400. 2 SATA 250 GB Seagate HHD running in raid 0. Additionally I have an Audigy 2 Platinum ZS.
NOW as for my present video card it is a Sapphire 2600Pro which still runs many games such as; UT3, COD4, Bioshock, Need for Speed™ ProStreet, Medal of Honor - Airborne, GRID, Frontlines-Fuel of War and finally Crysis. All of these with the exception of Crysis are running medium to high detail and above 30 fps.
The only benchmarking I use is 3dmark 2005 and I get 7850 3dmarks when overclocked at 3.8. And the Question Is will I see an increase in fps if I purchase the Sapphire 3850 AGP? Is it going to increase my benchmarking results or offer on a performance to warrant a purchase? This card has actually been ordered but not picked up yet ;-)

Thanks for your time and waiting to from you people

 

[Retrogame]

And the Question Is will I see an increase in fps if I purchase the Sapphire 3850 AGP? Is it going to increase my benchmarking results or offer on a performance to warrant a purchase? This card has actually been ordered but not picked up yet ;-)

I'd hazard a guess YES, because the 2600 Pro is not a truly powerful card but your very nice system is able to get it to work out anyways anyways...

An X2600 is about the same as an X1650 only somewhat better and DX10 compatible; whereas anything that's more towards the higher end simply has more brute strength. I think you should buy your 3850 for one last go-round.

 

[bobafett4ever]

What happened to part 2 with the dual core comparison?

 

[otheos]

Really, what happened to part 2, and also where have all 10 pages of comment gone? There used to be at least 16 pages, now only 5.

Anyhow, it's obvious that an X2 based review for AGP cards is very much awaited for people to decide on their upgrade path.

So get on with the 2nd part please.

 

[mojer21]

Hello, I also have an AMD X2 that I need to upgrade. When will part 2 be ready? I'm very curious to see how dual cores will do.

 

[jjavier]

Where is the second part? I want to upgrade my graphic card and I can't wait!!

Please, second part now!!

 

[bpdski]

This is a nice article, but I was really disappointed they used a 2600 PCIe instead of a 2600 AGP. I wish they would run tests in part 2 with both a 3.0Ghz dual core as well as a 2.0Ghz dual core. I happen to have a 4200+ that overclocks nicely to 3.0Ghz and I'd love to see how it handles all the cards. Maybe they'll find a 2600 AGP also for part 2.

 

[rcraig]

I, too, am eagerly awaiting part two.

 

[bobafett4ever]

almost a month later and still no part 2

 

[PeterSmith]

I own a S939 system with an Opteron 175 @2.4 GHz dual core and an AGP socket. I am curious what graphics card will be the right one or is scaling well with that system, I am convinced my CPU is not outdated for most of the games. May be a Radeon 3850 AGP, but still hoping there will be a Radeon 3870 based AGP card....

 

[sdliddo]

Got me an old socket754 AMD3000 currently with just a 1gb mem and using an old X1600 ATI card. Playing only WOW on it but kept getting into a ton of errors on it which i am attributing to VERY likely my monitor which is a Samsung 22inch 1680X1050 resolution. Even under the lowest settings I get into this problem.

I want to know if this would help with the game crashing at any time. Given my 22inch monitor's native resolution I figure my poor abused vidcard is simply not suited for the resolution.

I'm planning to buy this card if someone can assure me I wont run into problems with the game crashing. I mean my even older 9800PRO running on an Athlon1800XP and VISTA running a 1024X768 resolution seems to work fine.

Another question I would ask if the FPS would improve with this card or not. God knows I cant play WoW on a 5-10fps rating. Lolz. Hope someone can help me

 

[Bad213Boy]

I don't understand how the testers of this article are unaware of Rivatuner. It's a well known overclocking utility that actually allows you to unlock pipelines instead of flashing your g-card. Silly rabits, tricks are for kids.

 

[Bad213Boy]

I also want to make another comment. I've overclocked my Athlon 64 3400+ Newcastle from 2.4GHz to 3.0GHz and overclocked my 3850 IceQ 3 card, my computer runs these games pretty smooth. The only game I need to play are role playing games like NWN2 and The Witcher. Plays them perfectly. The only problem I have is that RAM is hard to find. I have two 1Gig sticks and they actually slow down my FSB because it doesn't have a northbridge that allows hyperthreading. I can still use 1Gig at 1:1 ratio though. But if I use a 512MB stick, I get a 15% jump.

I only pray they keep coming out with AGP cards. This g-card was my last hope. I know my computer has alot more use left, as long as someone produces a high powered g-card. This is the reason why many people perfer buying an PS2 rather than a computer. If they would just give the AGP nation more support, it showed me that there really isn't much of a difference between PCIE or AGP. The only problem I find is the how the two differ in how to overclock RAM sticks.

 

[Spathi]

The conclusions in this article are rubbish, the benchmarks are OK and the card is easy to overclock. They should do this again (HT P43 and X2) VS (A BRAND SPANKING LATEST NEW SYSTEMS WITH A MEGA SUPER DUPER CPU) with a HD3850 and lots of games without hand picking.

The detractors all over the net wasted money on a new PC... that is why they all cry die.

 

[Hsi]

Part 2:

Test System and Configuration

Processor: AMD 4800+ Brisbane @ 2.75 GHz
Motherboard: Biostar K8M800 Micro AM2
RAM: 2 GB OCZ DDR2-667 Gold
Hard Drive: WD5000AAKS 500 GB SATA
Networking: Onboard
Graphics Card: Sapphire 3850 AGP
Power Supply: Antec Earthwatts EA430 430W ATX12V v2.0
OS: XP SP3
Driver: Catalyst 8.5

Gaming Benchmarks:

3DMark 06, default settings - 8379


Cysis, Medium-High, no AA settings from article @ 1280 X 1024 - 23.73 FPS

Crysis, all medium except textures and shaders on high and shadows on low (the way I actually play) @ 1152 X 864 - 27.96 FPS


No video encoding test or overclocking attempt on the vid card.

 

[Guest]

Where is Part 2 ? I'm still waiting..

 

[guderiancol]

Try playing rtcw, et, opengl games and q3 games engine, 3850 agp sucks in all of them, poor fps, (30, 17, 20). Why? I have hotfix 8.7, corsair psu at 750w, 3 gbs of ram and windows xp. My old msi 5700le works all way better in those games. Noone old catalyst works for it.

 

[Guest]

Hello Guys,

Any idea about test of 3850 AGP with Dual-Core CPU?

Thanks,

Dilson.

 

[IowaSunshine]

Can anyone help?

my rig is about 4 years old and I want to try to postpone buying new for a little while longer.

I have a ASUS P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard, P4 3.0 ghz, 3gigs ram, 2.5 TB storage, running 2 PCI EVGA GeForce 6200 video cards (3x 19" + 47" LCD HD TV)

I bot Hauppauge Win-TV-HVR 1950 and get jerky video on HiDef. I was wondering if what Video Card (PCI or AGP) would be recommended?

I was going to buy Radeon 3850 from Newegg but my order would not go through and when finally got someone on the phone they said it was sold out and now I see it is discontinued.

Any recommendations what video card I can run?