Sapphire Radeon HD3850 512MB (AGP)

[Mark West]

Evening all,

I've just installed this new card to replace an X850XT; running under
XP32 (or XP64) I'm not seeing any performance increase, quite the
opposite in fact.

I did a full reinstall of both OS's, as it was about due anyway... What
I did find odd was that the Cat 8.1 supplied on CD installed fine, but
trying to install the 8.6 driver failed saying it didn't recognise the card.

/Generally/ Windows 32 runs games a bit faster than the x64 version, but
at the moment (as an example) I'm getting 30-50fps on Pacific Fighters
with this card, whereas I got 100+ on the X850XT.

Are there any specific 3850 drivers I need to grab - tried Sapphire's
website and it only pointed me to the Hotfix ones which aren't offering
any performance increase. Online reviews indicate that this card should
really fly.

Any help appreciated - specs are:-

Athlon X64 dual core 4800+
ABIT AV8 3rd Eye
Crucial 2GB RAM (4 x 512MB)
Creative Audigy 2

I'm now tempted to go down the Vista x64 route to see if that can open
up this card.

Cheers,

Mark

 

[Augustus]

Any help appreciated - specs are:-

Athlon X64 dual core 4800+
ABIT AV8 3rd Eye
Crucial 2GB RAM (4 x 512MB)
Creative Audigy 2

I'm now tempted to go down the Vista x64 route to see if that can open up
this card.

Cheers,

Mark

It should really fly in comparison to your old card....when you did the full
reinstall are you sure you correctly installed all the m/b chipset drivers?
I would try benching with 3DMark06 before, updating the drivers then
retesting. The fact that the new Cat's are not seeing the 3850 as a valid
card is telling....try that before doing anything major like you're
planning.

 

[Augustus]

It should really fly in comparison to your old card....when you did the
full
reinstall are you sure you correctly installed all the m/b chipset
drivers? I would try benching with 3DMark06 before, updating the drivers
then retesting. The fact that the new Cat's are not seeing the 3850 as a
valid card is telling....try that before doing anything major like you're
planning.

The other issue could be the AGP issues that many of the ATI cards
have...although usually what happens in those cases is the dreaded "Zero
display service" message on install of the Cat's above the 7.5's for many. I
wound up selling an AGP X1650 Pro 512Mb card simply because no hotix of
Catalyst released up to the 8.4's could make it work on an Opteron 185 A8N-E
setup or a Dell P4 box.

 

[Mark West]

The other issue could be the AGP issues that many of the ATI cards
have...although usually what happens in those cases is the dreaded "Zero
display service" message on install of the Cat's above the 7.5's for many. I
wound up selling an AGP X1650 Pro 512Mb card simply because no hotix of
Catalyst released up to the 8.4's could make it work on an Opteron 185 A8N-E
setup or a Dell P4 box.

Cheers for the suggestion.... I'm using the latest Hyperion 5.18 drivers
which worked flawlessly before. I'm going to email the suppliers of the
card to see if they can offer any help; in the meantime I'll carry on
tinkering with things.

The only thing I've spotted online is something concerning the PSU: I've
got a decent Akasa 500W unit and am feeding 2 x 4-way cables into the
8-way PCIe connector on the card (via the included adaptor). Is there
any chance the card is not getting the right amount of juice? There are
2 x 6-way PCIe power leads on this PSU, would one of them be any better
as I've read bits about using that instead and grounding the two surplus
pins?

Again, thx for the input.

Mark

 

[Augustus]

The only thing I've spotted online is something concerning the PSU: I've

got a decent Akasa 500W unit and am feeding 2 x 4-way cables into the
8-way PCIe connector on the card (via the included adaptor). Is there any
chance the card is not getting the right amount of juice? There are 2 x
6-way PCIe power leads on this PSU, would one of them be any better as
I've read bits about using that instead and grounding the two surplus
pins?

Again, thx for the input.

Mark

I can assure you that's not the problem in this case....

 

[Mark West]

Mark, have you checked for something simple, e.g. making sure
vertical sync is disabled?

I wish it was that Fresh install & correct drivers...

 

[Mark West]

You have an X850XT before right? Did you have some overclocking/ tweaking
utility like ATiTool or ATi Tray Tools installed? Did you disable the
ATiSmart or ATi Hotkey Poller services at any point? ATi cards subsequent to
the X850 series run at different clock speeds in 2D and 3D. An overclocking/
tweaking utility often disables those services, preventing the 2D/3D clock
switchover.

Verify the card is running at full speed in 3D mode. If you have a 2nd
monitor, pull up the CCC Overdrive tab on the 2nd monitor while playing a
game. If you have only one monitor, use the hardware monitoring strip charts
in Rivatuner. You can also try Alt-Tab'ing out of a game with the CCC
Overdrive tab open.

Yeah the 850XT ran fine... but was never overclocked; the only thing I
ever did with ATItt was force apps to run with 4xAA. It *seems* like the
PSU I'm using isn't quite up to the job (ie. not quite supplying the 30A
required on the +12V).

More expense :-(