Customer Reviews

Sapphire Radeon HD3850 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI-I / TVO AGP Graphics Card

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this card as a way to extend the life of my aging AGP based system. I have a P4 2.8 GHZ machine w/ Windows XP and 2 GB of RAM. I was using the system w/ an NVIDIA 7600 GT Card.
I have been a big fan of NVIDIA in the past because I think they make great cards and have very stable drivers. I had tried ATI cards in the past and have always gone back to NVIDIA mainly due to stability of driver issues. This was the fastest AGP based card that I could find so I decided to give it a try. By the way-I only use my machine for World of Warcraft. My frame rates had dipped into about 12 FPS since I just upgraded to a 26 inch 1080P Samsung monitor.

I uninstalled my NVIDIA driver and uninstalled the card and put this one in and I downloaded the full Catalyst Suite from ATI (the most recent one from December 2008) and restarted the machine. I have to say I've been very impressed with this card. I have the graphics setting now pretty much maxed out and its running at 1900x1200 resolution at 30 to 40 FPS. So basically, it allowed me to squeeze about another 6 months to a year out of my system. I'm planning on getting an allienware system built next year.

Overall-I'm very impressed with the price and quality of the card and the driver stability seems to be much better. Maybe since AMD took over ATI they fixed this issue. Hope this review was helpful.

I originally was saddened very much when I learned how obsolete my old video card was. I upgraded from an ATI Radeon 9800 XT (AGP interface). I thought this card was awesome and was disappointed that it was the only thing holding me back from playing newer games such as Bioshock. My older card only had pixel shader 2.0. This was VERY depressing as I bought the computer used and wasn't looking forward to the option of having to replace the whole system. However I was surprised to see that such a good card came in the AGP format. This card is just awesome. It is however extremely long, longer then I had anticipated. If your computer is a small compact thing, this simply will not fit in it. It has a power cord that comes with it. Its really simple to plug in; Just make sure your power supply can handle the extra strain. Also this card does come with DVI ports (2) and S-video (1). Don't worry though: This card will work with your standard VGA monitor as they included a converter. However to fully appreciate this card, you will get better results with a LCD via DVI connection. This card so far has handled everything I've thrown at it with surprising numbers of FPS (frames per second). I am extremely pleased with this card. I was not looking forward to having to replace my whole computer just to try and get a PCI-E slot. If you know your case has a great amount of space, and your looking to take your game to the next level, you should really try this card out. You will be stunned!

While NVIDIA seems to have abandoned the AGP market in late 2007/early 2008...ATI stepped up to plate and hit a homerun with this awesome graphics card. I previously had a NVIDIA 7950 (over heated), then NVIDIA 7600GS but this beats them both. Very smooth animation, incredible 3D effects, easy install. The ATI software support is not as great as NVIDIA, but it will get you the latest drivers.

If you're stuck with an AGP motherboard and aren't ready to upgrade yet to PCI-E, get another year of gaming with this graphics card.

I got this card because my Geforce 7600GS was only able to fill up 80% of the screen on my Sony 50" SXRD and could only reach 1360x768 resolution. More specifically, I couldn't use the HDMI connection to this monitor because the Geforce drivers had no way to handle overscan as NVIDIA seems to be ignoring the AGP market these days. (And I'm not running Vista which has support for overscan.) So I had to use the PC connection to this monitor instead which leaves a lot of black around the image even in zoom mode.

PROS

With the Sapphire Radeon HD3850 I am now able to use 100% of the screen and can reach the resolution of 1920x1080 which is the top resolution of this monitor. Also, I ran a little test with my TrackMania Nations program and it ran fine with every advanced graphics feature activated. Video playback on Windows Media Player also seems smoother. (A problem I used to have with lip-sync on my computer from time to time seems to have gone away.)

CONS

When I tried to install the latest ATI drivers from the ATI site I got the error "Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system". I did a bit of research and found this was a common problem with ATI products. I tried a few things to make the problem go away but it wouldn't go away. (And I'm a system administrator with lots of experience.) But I'm not having any problems using the drivers that came on the CDROM with the graphics card.

[Update! The solution was to use the Sapphire drivers and not the ATI drivers. The Sapphire drivers are at [...] and are currently slightly older than the ATI drivers -- using Catalyst 9.4 instead of Catalyst 9.5]

MINOR CON

I'm actually not getting use of 100% of my screen, more like 99.8% of it. There is a tiny blank space at the top of my screen that I can't get rid of because the video card doesn't seem to allow vertical adjustments and the vertical adjustments on the monitor are too crude for me to get rid of such a small problem. (The smallest adjustment on the monitor moves the screen twice as much as the small space I am complaining about.)

I just want to say that I did alot of shopping around for AGP cards.and This one toke the cake. People were always complaining about drivers, and blue screens. I ordered this video card one afternoon, recieved it the next. Amazon beat newegg Hands down on shipping, when I got the card it wasn't as HUGE as everyone kept saying, but it's not a small card. PLugged it in, installed the drivers (very easy download from Sapphire) and voila, it works like a charm. Every game i've tried is maxed out, no lag, over 100FPS. MMOs like Guild wars and WOW are a little less, around 50 FPS, but that's servers, not this card. If you're looking for a great, fast card to keep that AGP system kicking, this is it. don't let stupid people fool you with driver problems, just make sure you have a big enough PSU and 2 extra 4-pin plugs, and you're set. This is the greatest investment for those aging machines to keep up with the games of now

Pentium 4 3.3 GHZ
1024 MB PC3200 RAM
500GB 7200RPM HDD
ATI RADEON 3850HD AGP

Let's face it. AGP is dying. what are your options if you have an AGP board?. Well... *sigh*. New mobo and CPU (60 bucks at the CHEAPEST, and not worth it if you have a good, but older CPU and mobo.) probably new RAM (4gb of DDR2 is 50 bucks in some places.) and obviously, a new video card. (the HD4770 is around 100 bucks, and an excellent card!.) That's a total of... this many *holds up fingers.*

on the other hand, I was able to get this card at 75 bucks.. still, a bit spendy. But it's well worth the investment if you want to keep your AGP board alive for just a year or 2 longer.

The card itself is very good. can run all the latest games smoothly, such as Left 4 Dead (which isn't saying much as it was running ok on my laptop.) Street Fighter 4, Crysis, and even the new Ghostbusters game. This card will handle it with most of the details and the res turned up.

Anyone planning to purchase this card need to know something. This requires a hefty amount of amperage from your power supply. even if you have a power supply with a PCI-e connector, you should use the supplied adapter.
This card requires 30A on the 12v+ rail. That is a higher than the required amount for a GTX285 card.

The card will run without problem on a lower Amerage 12v rail, but your power supply will be getting stressed to do it, and it could eventually kill your power supply. just a warning.

The good news and bad news about this card:

The good news - great card! I bought it as the "last best" videocard for my AGP motherboard - I took the advice on tom's hardware and got this card. And it raised my performance hugely (my old video card was a 128MB GeForce), with no problems. It's a little tricky getting the latest drivers (best bet is to go to sapphire tech: [...]), but otherwise no problems.

The bad news is - they don't really tell you (and the manual is also very cryptic about it), but it turns out it needs _2_ 4-pin power supply connectors fed into it. As my old video card needed _0_ such power supply connectors, this was an issue :). It's easily remedied by buying power supply splitter cables, which only cost about $4 (look at the 'people who bought this also bought' section), but if you don't order them in advance, and you're not near a Fry's, you may have bought this video card and be unable to install it.

I have an HP a250n Pentium 4HT 2.60mhz with 1GB RAM running Windows 7. I've been thinking about buying a new PC, but figured it would be WAY cheaper to just upgrade my video card. After searching around for AGP4x/8x video cards, I found that the HD3850 got the most praise out of the other 512mb cards, so I decided to give it a shot. As soon as I took the HD3850 out of the box, I new I was in for something awesome. When I switched out my NVIDIA GeForce5200 128MB card to the HD 3850, the FPS on Doom 3 sky rocketed... Not to mention overall pc performance. Also, Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead ran a smooth 30FPS at 1024x768. This card gave new life to my PC. Dual DVI, S-Video, Dual monitor support... But no 1080p. Only thing is that you have to get a 450w or greater power supply with 30Amps on 12 volt with 2x4 power connector recommended. If you're looking into getting one of these, you might want to do some research before it arrives at your doorstep, so that you have everything you need to install it and have it up and running in no time without any issues.

I got this card through Amazon to replace my ATI X1550 Pro that was in my desktop previously to get the full gaming experience from my desktop and noticed a difference right away. My PC's processor was not nearly working as hard, When I went into the system's option on DOOM III the Auto adjust went from High Quality to Ultra High Quality without batting an eye, and the graphics seemed more life like like than it did before with alot more detail.

I've decided rename my card to ATI's BAVC3850HD (Big --- Video Card 3850 HD) with emphasis on the "A" due to the size witch was at least 5 inches bigger than my ATI X1550, my case was able to seat with no problems but would not try putting this baby in anything less than a full size ATX tower due to it's size. Needs two 4 IDE Pin power plugs that will fit into a adapter that then plugs into the card itself to power it. ATI says the minimum is a 450W PSU but I would use at least a 500W PSU (Mine is a RAIDMAX 630W). I did not bother with the driver CD that came with it but instead downloaded them from [...] along with the 8.12 patch for VISTA and before swapping cards I had removed all the previous drivers, Loading the drivers in Windows XP the process took about 2 mins in Windows VISTA it took about 20 mins (this included the 8.12 patch) when done it did look great, just took alot longer to load in VISTA.

Overall, An excellent card and well worth the upgrade but as most reviewers have mentioned this will most likely be AGP's last Solid upgrade before riding off into the sunset, As of this writing ATI is the last Video Card company to make AGP cards but I doubt they will for much longer since all MOBO manufactures have turned over to PCIe, They will probably all but be gone by 2011. This last upgrade will at least give me another year or two before I have to replace my aging based INTEL 865 PERLK Desktop (I had originally built in September of 2003).

System Specs:
P4 3.4GHZ socket 478, 1 MB cache processor
INTEL 865 PERLK MOBO
4GB of DDR1 400mhz PC3200 RAM
680W PSU
300GB IDE HDD
24bit 5.1 Creative Sound Card
Edimax Wi-Fi Card
1GB intergrated Intel NIC
ATI Radeon HD 3850 AGP (Replaced ATI Radeon X1550)
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (32 Bit)

Update March 29th, 2011:

I've passed this PC RIG to my Son with the above system specifications as above and it still plays almost about 90% of the games out there with excellent gaming quality. The Windows 7 index gives this Card a 7.0 (Out of 7.9) for performace. It's amzing the longevity this Card has given this old RIG.

I don't claim tobe a game champion but this board seems to run at 40 FPS or faster and works with Directx 10. Don't use the included CD but down load the latest drivers from ATI.