News Sapphire takes Radeon HD 3850 to AGP

Ok, Ghys, I was assuming that You have a Asus MB with a CT479 adaptor like me, but am aware of some other Pentium M desktop solutions.
I did some benchmarking in Supreme commander, results as follows....

Pentium M 740@226x12=2712mhz. 1gig Dual channel ram @452mhz cas 2.5,3,3,5
MSI 7800GS g70 @ 513mhz core 1606mhz ram (its been volt modded)

Supreme Commander
1024x768 FPS min 4.73, max 85.29, average 34.359 Total pixels 786432
1280x1024 FPS min 3.79, max 52.52, average 22.139 Total pixels 1310720
1440x900 FPS min 4.81, max 66.8 , average 25.762 Total pixels 1296000

game settings were equal for all 3 test runs, slightly above medium, custom.

So for my setup, and with this game, I am definitely GPU limited.

 

techno biff

hi all, you can probably help me back from the edge of extinction, cut a very long story short, i had overheating problems which i think came from my AMD ATHLON 3800?? running at 2.4ghz ish maybe 2.6 with a radeon x800xt platinum card.{not positive on the chip} i now have an amd 4000? i think running at 2.6 ghz and also bought an agp ati sapphire hd2600xt as a bit of an upgrade. we couldnt get the card to run bf2 or ghost recon or cod4 anywhere near as good as the old components, really laggy and jerky especially when i was getting blown up in bf2, and so the card is going back and i have been advised to wait for the 3850 and try that as the drivers for the 2600 didnt seem up to much.
i cant afford to get a complete new system with pci-e so wondered what your thoughts were, the x800xt is back in and running fine and the chip seems cool enough and hasnt switched off.

as much as i am a biff at this my mate is a bit of a ninja.

if you want any other specs let me know and i will find out.

hope you can offer me some advice other than find a skip

and i hope i posted this in the right place

and its a skt 939

many thanks

 

I do have a P4C800-E Deluxe and a CT479. I would make some cod4 benches but recently my pc has been dieing on me and crashing while gaming.. I had to drop my overclock 500mhz to 2.2ghz... Therefore there is a much greater chance for the cpu to truly bottleneck. Maybe these stability problems are why cod4 has been running so bad ever since i bought it. It's actually getting worse everyday. For those of you who know the game, I now drop in the 20's fps in Backlot or Downpour... It's become totally unplayable

the problem is you're going UP in resolution for your testing. You should go down or else it's obvious you'll be cpu limited. Of course your 3 year old gpu will bottleneck if you run 3months old games in 1440x900

 

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Hi. Abouth the AGP bus bottleneck. I am inclined to believe its a myth put forward by those that need you to continue to spend money on new parts. this really sucks if you have a budget, and want full settings in games. The Bandwidth for AGP is 2.1 GB per second; unilaterally. So with this assumption the AGP would bottleneck a game with 512 MB textures like Quake 4 at 4 frames a second.

512MB+512MB+512MB+512MB=2 GB

this is simply not the case. I run AMD 4200+, 2GB DDRII 667, -----------------512 MB Radeon 1950 pro AGP 8x---------------
I get 4790 3dmarks in 3dmark 06, 60-100 FPS in Battlefield 2142 at supermax settings, 50-85 FPS in Team Fortress 2 Supermax settings, and UT3 is georgeous at 45 FPS 2 notches below all high detail. I push WAY MORE than 2.1 GB a second on this old 8x Bus. The biggest performance boost is RAM amount, and your processor power. pair this new AGP card with 2-4 GB of ram, and a 6000+ series intel or AMD chip and youve got a low budget monster killer on your hands that will run anything you throw its way; SUPERMAX.

 

glad to hear it...

now, could someone test if dual cores are a necessity in today's game ?

 

Ok here is little Test I'm Using http://www.asrock.com/mb/cpu.asp?Model=AM2NF3-VSTA&s= Mother board with x2 5200+ and x1950pro AGPx8 and find that games are remarkably stable and fluent. I did Compare tests with http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=prodcpusupport&prod_no=251&maincat_no=1 with x1950Pro PCI-e and speed gain was 1-3% Top which can be added to chipset and SATAII 300 Transfer

 

Sorry mate, but your analysis massively oversimplifies the issue to the point that it is just wrong (no offence!). First off, a game engine that shunted every texture in a frame across the AGP interconnect for every frame would be hugely inefficient. The graphics card caches textures onboard where it might need to use them again in future frames. Secondly, what is your source for saying that Quake 4 uses 512 MB textures?

You do not push more than 2.1GB/s over the 8x AGP bus, period. It is simply not possible. 2.1GB/s is the interface maximum speed and with overheads you won't even get that.

 

Wow....that just made my head hurt.

Though I appreciate what you're going for and that your end conclusion (that AGP is in no way bandwidth oversaturated) is accidentally correct, that was probably THE most flawed analysis I've seen as of late...and that's after some pretty bad ones from my watercooling article.

This just misses a tremendous amount of how a graphics card actually processes textures, or really anything for that matter...

 

Some of you people are not very brite.
I have a 939Dual-Sata2 which is a combo AGP/PCI-E board based on the ULI chipset..And on this board my AGP slot out runs the PCI-E slot by 2 to 5 frames and never pauses like the PCI-E slot does. I always wonder about this but now I know the answer.
The Nvidia GeForce 8800Ultra would not even max out the bandwidth of the AGP bus because the video card is only as fast as the CPU, GPU, and HT BUS is.
http://www.kyol.net/~harrycat/Goldfinger.html

 

Pot... kettle

 

I have a P4 Prescott 3.0 on a asus P4P800 Deluxe over clocked to 3.6 with 2 gig of ram and it still rocks. All I need to do is upgrade that x850xt I have. I have a intel duo core to and they seam no faster, probably because im running vista and on the p4 XP. Im in!!! cant wait to buy it but the price has to be inline with the pci-e versen.

 

Well, my lovely girlfriend went and gave me my birthday present early... I love my girlfriend! XD

She bought me the Sapphire 3850 and I've got a pleasant picture for you all. Enjoy!

 

Oh. I was expecting a pic of er.. something else.

 

I just recieved agp HD 3850 card, from newegg I had ati 9550 256mb before and im not sure if its the powersupply, 400watts +12volts 11A the card did work with 11A it requires 30A, but the 9550 plays counterstrike better and the HD 3850 also doesnt install the latest catalyst drivers. I think i threw away my money $178 dollars on agp instead of just upgrading to pci express. now i have to spend another 100 to get a decent powersupply to see if upgrade was worth it. What i want to ask anybody that can help me, Can I get a PSU with Pci E connector and use that to power the AGP HD 3850 card, its the same 6pin connector.
I have an Intel d865perl, 2.8 fsb 800 CPU, 1gig ddr400 and a sata 16mb HD . Any help on what PSU would work for me would be appreciated. Im not trying to keep AGP alive i was just trying to upgrade ala Cheap and think its gonna end up costing me more with worst results . lol. thank you.

 

I have just read only a few posts and i must add that i have an msi board that has socket am2 and ddr2 support. I bought it with agp slot because i didn't want to update my agp card., to pci express (Im cheap scape ) and i only wanted bf2 to play better and didn't need that much better hardware. The new board with a geforce 6800 le 128 mb card played bf2 on high settings except for textures. I was able to increase the agp aperture to 1g in the bios to help my deficient video ram. It was amazing the smoothness of play i got from this setting in the bios.

To make a long story short i downloaded new game demos like cod4 and crysis to see how they play., and was suprised to see that they would play. however crysis would only play on medium choppy and well on low (drats) .
I was almost content to play on my xbox 360 until the price of updating to pci express + motherboard could be justified.
I noticed one day an agp card that seemed to be what i needed for my agp system. After researching owner reviews with lower system specs I was convinced i should try the card and see what it could do for me.

 

Sorry, accedentally pushed the tab key and it posted my above comment before i was finished.
(cont from above post)
After installing the sapphire radeon hd 3850 agp 512mb card for @ $154.00 including shipping iplayed bf2 on all maxed settings and 8x antialiasing on 1600x1200 fps were 70 and up flying through the sky .

Cod 4 played on highest settings much prettiier than my xbox on 1080I.
Finally, Crysis ( i didn't have much expectations for this game on my system) played on high 1900 x 1200 on my 24 inch monitor
with all high settings(using the hack for very high settings on dx9 to emulate dx10) the game played suprisingly smooth. I and my daughter played with this demo for hours enjoying the sheer beauty of the game and graphics with all the eye candy.
This card is amazing and Im happy that i ddn't have to go to pci express yet. ( This card rules for newer games like crysis and older.

My system specs:
amd dual core 64 4000 + oc to 2.4 ghz
msi k9MM-V agp
2gig corsair paired ddr2 800mhz (all fast settings in the motherboard)
corsair 450 watt power supply 33amp on the 12 volt rail
sapphire radeon agp hd 3850 512mb with overdrive on the 3d settings to 720/929 (auto tuned)
80 gig maxtor ide harddrive and hitachi dvd rom on cable select.
(except for the hard drive , case and optical drives that everyone has you can update your rig like this for $300 or less and play all the current games , sweet !!! ) NOW MY XBOX 360 IS JUST COLLECTING DUST, LOL

 

Hi guys
yes,i had a choice,sling my pentium 4 3.2ghz pc and get a phenom based motherboard bundle,or give my "old faithfull" a final outing with the awesome "sapphire radeon HD3850 agp",well after checking out the specifications and other reviews on the card i though i would give this six months of work experience in my "old faithfull" pc
initially i wasnt sure wether to buy the HD3850,alot of the reviews were very negative and there was alot of problems with the catylyst drivers for this card,some motherboards wouldnt recognize the HD3850 and when paying out £120 for a agp card you want it to at least work !
however after further research i discovered that both ati and sapphire have released a "agp hotfix" for both radeon HD2000/3000 based graphic cards,and apart from being a single "hotfix/patch" both companys update the agp hotfix drivers much in the same way as normal catylyst/forceware drivers

well upon opening the box from sapphire i was impressed by the way they package the card securely in the top portion of the box with the drivers and other extras in the bottom of the box,these include a vga to dvi adapter,tv-out cables,drivers disk and also a dinky little sapphire stciker for the front fascia of your pc case
fitting the card was a breeze however this was only due to the shear size of my gaming case,however smaller cases such as dell,emachines and acer desktop cases may experience problems accepting the HD3850 ,so be sure you take measurments before purchasing the card
once inserted into my agpx8 bus and after securing the back plate to the case i needed to find 2 x 12v molex connectors needed to supply the 95w(max draw) required to run the HD3850
a 2x12v molex converter cable is supplied and this fits into the 8pin pci-express socket on the back of the card,however when connecting the molex i tend to use one set to molex connectors(most psu,s have at least 2 lines of molex connectors,i have a hiper 425watt psu which has 3)to connect to the HD3850
after closing the case and double checking all new connections i powered up the pc and and after the initiall Apprehension we all experience when using a new card the pc booted up without any problems,and as per normal windows xp recognized the new hardware and started the driver wizard which was cancelled
i had previously downloaded the "agp hotfix"( http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/CatalystAGPHotfix.aspx) which i installed using the express installation
the one thing i noticed is the time it took to install the catylyst agp hotfix and the ati driver,however after around 4 minutes the installation was complete and a reboot was required
after the restart the desktop loaded without any scares and after the screen went blank twice(which is usual when installing ati catylyst drivers) the desktop was loaded succesfully
all that was needed then was to open the "catylyst control center" and choose the "advanced" option,however for novice pc owners the "basic" option is a better choice
now for the benchmarks,well considering the speed of the pentium 4 3.2ghz and the 2gb pc3200 ram i went for the "3dmark03" benchmark which is more suited for this particular system
i will compare the results with the systems previous card(geforce 7900gs agp) to show the superior performance of the HD3850
3dmark 03(default settings)
geforce 7900gs(agp) : 14,917 3d marks
radeon HD3850(agp) : 25,891 3d marks
3dmark 06(default settings)
geforce 7900gs(agp) : 4344 3dmarks
radeon HD3850(agp) : 6313 3dmarks
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
summary : as you can see the performance when compared to the nifty geforce 7900gs is striking,when i ran 3dmark03 i was expecting around 18,000 marks however when the score 25,891 appeared i was amazed,this is more than i expected and though this score was impossible with a p4 based pc
this shows the raw power behind the HD3850 and this makes it by far the fastest agp card currently avalible to agp owners,and as cards get more powerful and with the extra cost incured to manufactuers when producing high end agp cards this could probally be the final nail in the agp bus coffin !
game performance :
some games especially "colin mcrae dirt" and "need for speed pro street" suffered severe lag however this may be the actual game code as these games are well documented to suffer from lag problems
and with direct-x-9 games such as doom3 and quake4 performance was outstanding,with frame rates over 90fps on ultra detail and 75fps on "fear" the HD3850 is a great card for those older dx9 games
and then there was "crysis",and allthough the game was initially set to low i changed this to medium and resolution 1024x768(from 800x600) and using the "crysis benchmark tool" i managed 26fps which is pretty good considering the overall settings and also since many top enthusiasts say crysis is a dual and quad core optimized game and wont run on single core processors..how wrong they were
another game which pleasently suprised me was "grid" which ran pretty well as did the legendary "bioshock" which also ran very well
so there you have it,the radeon HD3850 is a excellent card and will put some extra oomph into those pentium 4 and athlon64 systems,however make sure it can fit in your pc and also re-evaluate your power supply requirements
well done sapphire..whats next ,xfx release a agp version of the gtx260... i wish !
brianthesnail

 

glad it works good for you. However it doesn't seem like you need high framerates to be happy so this might be why you are satisfied by the card

 

I'm happy for him too. And it seems to beat the crap out of the 7900GS, which has been the best/fastest AGP offering so far.

Personally, when I needed a good graphics card a couple of years ago, I ditched my nVidia nForce3 250GB-based mobo (AGP) for one almost identical, but based on the nForce4 (PCIe). I did a bit of math and it turned out to be the cheapest upgrade (a "fast" AGP card would cost much more than getting a new mobo and a PCIe card). But sometimes you just don't have that luxury...

 

glad it worked out for you, brianthesnail, but you do realise most games now require a dual core?

i really wish nVidia can bring out a CUDA enabled PCI card (8400), that way, we can do Fold@Home farm much easier.