News Sapphire takes Radeon HD 3850 to AGP

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/01..._3850_to_agp/1

Sapphire showed us how it plans to keep those of you on the trailing edge of the graphics industry as close to the bleeding edge as possible.

[Tyinsar]

Have we saturated the AGP bus yet? - though I'm guessing the CPU would more often be the bottleneck on AGP systems. Still, I think this is cool and there is a market so:

[DXR_13KE]

i am still running an AGP system.... but to buy this GC is kind of stupid...... i can't use it in the event of some part of my system fries.....

[C-Sniper]

wouldn't the AGP bus itself become a bottleneck for this card?

[proxess]

First I'd like to see this in action. A review maybe? It feels like that "one last upgrade" for someone still running AGP. I don't think its that bad of an idea.

[Jamie]

Nice to see some companies still supporting AGP, I'm still running an AGP system.

[willyolio]

every time you think it's going to die... another company extends its lifetime by another generation.

i'm still running an AGP system, but i really don't see the point. pretty much everything is outdated, so even if i upgrade my video card i still have nothing left for my processor.

[genesisofthesith]

Bar those with a 939 agp board running an x2 this is pretty stupid. Just let AGP die already.

[Amon]

Originally Posted by C-Sniper

wouldn't the AGP bus itself become a bottleneck for this card?

Not really. IIRC, there's still tonnes of bandwidth left that we still haven't really been able to use, so we could use even the next generation monster graphics cards on it if we wanted to (provided they are engineered in a compatible manner). But there were some obvious limitations of the AGP bus that were rectified with PCI-express, such as the amount of power it can provide.

As for the card, I hope the one thing they avoid f*cking up on this card is making it $50 more expensive than the PCIe version.

[Jack_Pepsi]

This will be perfect for my SN95G5. It'll replace my X1950 Pro - with some water-cooling on that thing it should be as good as a 3870. :P

[sotu1]

not a bad idea...i think for the failing company it might bring about a little cash boost....probs not much tho TBH. its a great one last upgrade tho, agreed with u there

[Ghys]

useless

My Pentium M @ 2.7ghz bottlenecks my X850XT in call of duty 4 ... I doubt any cpu coupled with an AGP port would do anything of this card unless it's an extremely overclocked X2

[HandMadeAndroid]

I've been stretching out my old P4 system for months now, and to be honest the last AGP card I bought on a whim from Maplin was a complete waste of money (£70 for a 7300 such a premium), I'd have been better off saving my money towards a new system..... so today I got a new CPU/board and ram, XP installed in 10mins lol, gone is the 'vacuum cleaner' in the corner of my study! I do love the bios controlled fans...silence is golden. I must say though a bit off topic that the new, well new to me heat sink fitting for the core duo royally sucks and is cheap and nasty. I even rang the store up and the technician told me that the board would be visibly bent by it and not to worry; whats going on there? I'm guessing the card in this article is going to clock in at £150ish (?) Seems to me like chucking cash down the drain.

[HourBeforeDawn]

huh well this is great to see, I dont think we fully capped what the AGP slot could do before we made the move to PCI-E and my brother has a pretty decent system but with it being AGP thats the only thing dated but now we can make that one last upgrade to his system. ^_^

[Imperious]

Originally Posted by Ghys

useless

My Pentium M @ 2.7ghz bottlenecks my X850XT in call of duty 4 ... I doubt any cpu coupled with an AGP port would do anything of this card unless it's an extremely overclocked X2

I don't believe that at all, I also have a Pentium M 740 @ 2.7GHZ with a G70 based 7800gs on an Asus P4P800 dlx, and the only thing holding it back as far as new games go is the Video card, not to say of course that a more modern machine couldn't do better. I was at a Lan the other day and at 1440x900 on a LCD monitor UT3 ran appreciably slower than it does on my 19" CRT at 1152x864, which proves a video card bottleneck as opposed to cpu.
If the cpu was causing the bottleneck then it wouldn't matter much what resolution or detail settings were being used as the frame rate would stay roughly the same.
Obviously those of us who get a HD3850 AGP, we are all going to be cpu limited to a certain extent, only people with Asrock C2D and AGP will not have this issue.

Originally posted by HandMadeAndroid...
I've been stretching out my old P4 system for months now, and to be honest the last AGP card I bought on a whim from Maplin was a complete waste of money (£70 for a 7300 such a premium)

I don't know what P4 You've got but a 7300 is more likely Your problem, they are the bottom of the 7xxx series, Nvidia also made 7600gs, 7600gt, 7800gs, 7900gs ,and 7950GT AGP cards. So Yours is at the bottom of the heap.

[proxess]

I wonder how my pc would work with it? I definitely need more ram tho, i can feel 1gb choking the way it is...

[Tyinsar]

If it's the P4 in your sig a new machine would be your best bet by a long shot.

[Ghys]

Originally Posted by Imperious

I don't believe that at all, I also have a Pentium M 740 @ 2.7GHZ with a G70 based 7800gs on an Asus P4P800 dlx, and the only thing holding it back as far as new games go is the Video card, not to say of course that a more modern machine couldn't do better. I was at a Lan the other day and at 1440x900 on a LCD monitor UT3 ran appreciably slower than it does on my 19" CRT at 1152x864, which proves a video card bottleneck as opposed to cpu.
If the cpu was causing the bottleneck then it wouldn't matter much what resolution or detail settings were being used as the frame rate would stay roughly the same.

I know how these things work and I came to the conclusion that my cpu bottlenecks my videocard by using the same process as you did. In cod4 AND ut3, between 64x480 and 1280x960 there is no framerate difference at all. Enabling visual effects does not affect the framerate a lot either, which means it's the cpu that can't keep up

that's how things are for me, they might be different for you

[proxess]

any reviews out?

[Amon]

Originally Posted by Ghys

I know how these things work and I came to the conclusion that my cpu bottlenecks my videocard by using the same process as you did. In cod4 AND ut3, between 64x480 and 1280x960 there is no framerate difference at all. Enabling visual effects does not affect the framerate a lot either, which means it's the cpu that can't keep up

that's how things are for me, they might be different for you

Hmm, I guess it depends on what you play. Everything I play is almost entirely GPU-limited, so a lot of time needs to be spent to settle on a compromise of visual quality and consistency--whereas you may spend time toying around with physics-based effects to play comfortably. So far, the games I play don't hammer my CPU to pieces like yours may, so that's probably the difference between our experiences. Then again, mine and other people's dual-core processors might be the difference between ours and your computer.