News Sapphire takes Radeon HD 3850 to AGP

Thanks for the quick reply,basically i went with the HD3850 as its specs were far superior to the previous 7900gs,and this was reflected in the 3dmark benchmarks which were over 25k
however i shall be converting to pci-express next month with the purchase of the "acer aspire M3641,and compared to my current system this is a goliath,gone are the pentium 4(3.2ghz) and 2gb of pc3200 ram to be replaced by a intel core 2 quad q6700 and 4gb of ddr2 ram,however it comes with a geforce 8600gt which allthough not a bad card will be quickly replaced by a radeon HD4850 or a nvidia gts250(your opinion would be appreciated)
thanks again for the reply
brianthesnail !

 

HTPC

I disagree with the notion that the new 3850 AGP card is useless. I myself am looking at it for a possible conversion of my old computer into a HTPC after I build a new Core i7 system. At this time I have 2 options: a) buy a new motherboard, memory, and CPU and recycle the rest of my system; b) buy the AGP 3850. I will be useing the new Core i7 system to encode the content I will be using regardless, so the thing each system must do is be able to display HD content on my HD TV. The 3850 cost about $120 without shipping. An AM2 motherboard with integrated graphics that has an HDMI port and is capable of decoding HD cost 85$ all by itself. even with a 64 x2 CPU and cheap memory you are talking $160 without shipping, and it is > $200 with a cheap Phenom. Power consumption may be an issue, but I think it minor given the system will be in hybernate except when used to veiw content on the TV. I think this is a great use of this product and can potentially save my old computer from the scrap heap.

 

Brianthesnail is 100% correct in what he says about this card. I have had it installed for about 2 months now and it's been great. I did have a Radeon 9600 and this thing is so much better, faster, and the graphics in all games is now fantastic. I have an AMD 64-3500w/ 1 gig of ram. I'm adding more soon but for now this has made a huge difference in the game play. I was not able to run Bioshock with my last card and Crysis was impossible except on the lowest settings. Now, everything is set to the highest settings and I have no crashes or errors at all. The driver that ships with the card is useless like he said but the Sapphire website has the right one, a hotfix that loads easy. This card cost me $115.00 frpm Newegg and it's given my system a few more years to run before I upgrade more. I have a 500 watt power supply and the fan on this card is super quiet. It is a long card though so be sure to check that you have room for it. This is a good deal and I'm real happy with it.