bought Powercolor's 3650 AGP model for my wife's computer (not much of a gamer) and I had nothing but problems with drivers from ATI's site! (or anywhere else for that matter) The only thing that worked was to actually break down and use the CD that came in the box! (read as OLD drivers) uke2: Like it or not, it's been stable ever since....
Get the hotfix driver and all should be well, alternatively force the driver install via device manager.
Having read most of the posts in this thread am I correct in assuming that the drivers for the Powercolor 3850agp card are still more difficult to install than for the Sapphire 3850agp card? I am happy enough to modify .inf files/use the hotfix drivers so long as they work on either card. Many of the posts were written early on after the initail release of the Powercolor card so am really wondering what the situation is like now. My gut instinct tells me to go with the slightly more expensive Sapphire card if I were to go ahead and replace my current Nvidia 6600GT card. Certainly seems to be less issue with the Sapphire. Am I also correct in assuming that my current PSU ( Coolermaster Real Power M520), which has 3 +12V rails rated at 19A, should be enough to run either card?
I would really suggest You go for the Powercolor card, as it has significantly better cooling, and All drivers can be force installed via device manager. My card has no issues with official drivers as it has a device id of 9505. Your PSU should have noproblems, I just fixed my boot issues with a new Thermaltake Toughpower 650w Qfan PSU, Antec smartpower 2 500w was ok until E5200 dual core cpu came along, couldn't quite deliver the goods.
Your PSU should be fine. The higher amp rating of 30 is for single rail PSU's and as long as you have above 16 on a multi rail I'd say there will be no problems. Only PSU's on AMD's recommended list are fool-proof however. I would strongly recommend you get the Sapphire 3850 since you have a VIA chipset. In fact I would insist. My posts above cover my experiences with the Club3D/Powercolor model and a K8T800 Pro chipset, which I never got 100% stable even after playing with all bios settings, reducing the clocks on the card, underclocking my system and RAM, running memtest, replacing my PSU with a quality Silverstone model on the recommended list and placing a heatsink on the bridge chip. I sold the card to an Intel user who had it running overclocked no problems on the Intel chipset at his first attempt. Quite annoying, but good luck to him! Therefore it isn't just about drivers. The Sapphire card works with VIA chipsets, whilst the Club3D/Powercolor one is hit and miss. Someone in another forum with a K8T800Pro chipset bought the Powercolor, couldn't get it stable and sent it back. When they tried the Sapphire card, all was well.
Thanks for that info - did you try the Sapphire in your setup? Unless I hear some positive news from VIA users about the Powercolor then I am leaning towards the Sapphire although I like and rate the Zerotherm cooler. Am I right in thinking that some/many HD 3850 AGP cards (inc Powercolors) come with a 9515 id? Are these the original batch or from a more recent batch. What drivers have been stable with your card?
I didn't try the Sapphire - after my annoying experience I stuck with a HIS x800XT PE ICE as I didn't want another bridge chipped card. I'm going to leave shader intensive/3.0 games for when I upgrade my whole rig. All I can say is others posting here and around other forums seem to have much better luck with the Sapphire on non-Intel systems, which also comes with a 2-molex to PCI-Express 8-pin lead if I'm not mistaken. I think you can also plug in the more common 6-pin PCI-Express connector into the 8-pin connector too. My Club3D/Powercolor didn't have any such adaptor, but it uses a 6-pin rather than 8-pin connector (my PSU had the required 6-pin PCI-Express connector anyway). I know the cooler looks nice and easier to clean, but the temps and fan control on both cards looks to be the same and the Sapphire blows more air over the voltage regulator heatsink by design. Plus my Club3D/Powercolor's RAM heatsink didn't even make contact with all the RAM chips! There were gaps, not that it should have made much of a difference. There were also cards that had defective heatsinks, where the fins stopped the fan from revolving. Quality control seems a little suspect by Club3D.
Just ordered a Powercooler HD3850 AGP for my aging Biostar K8NHA Grand (nForce 3) setup (Athlon 3000+, 2GB ram). Should I go with the hotfix drivers or try a stock Catalyst set? Been a few years since I visited here. Trying the 3850 AGP for a few months till I can afford to upgrade my whole system. Sam
driver won't install OK got my Powercolor HD3850 today. Trying to install it on Biostar K8NHA Grand (nForce 3 250 chipset) mobo. Uninstalled GeForce 6600GT, removed drivers, installed HD3850, ran latest hot fix driver install, seems to hang on ATI logo screen. Reboot and my nForce network driver never seems to load (networking icon in systray never shows up), HD3850 driver never got loaded, updating driver says no hardware installed, device manager shows VGA device, rerunning hotfix install says another windows install is running had to do a system restore with 6600gt to get back up and running. Any suggestions? Not sure from reading this thread what is the proper order to try to install the hd3850. Sam
The only thing I didn't see mentioned was forcing the driver install by pointing device manager to the desired .inf driver file. I have a Powercolor AG-3850 and that's what I had to do on XP. Just last week on Windows 7 I installed the lastest driver and all installed normally. The AGP 3850 is all that I expected it to be, very powerful card. Good luck.
Tried that as well, just says no compatible hardware found, doesn't install driver. Unfortunately non-Intel based systems have more problems getting the Powercolor HD3850 to work. I just RMA'd it today, after Newegg refunds me maybe I'll try the Sapphire model. Sam
I got 0 problems with my Sapphire. Overclocked to 720/950 all day long and running from over a year without issues.:nerd:
I decided eventually to get the Sapphire 3850 agp and everything went smoothly. Uninstalled previous card (Nvidia 6600GT card) via add/remove. Rebooted in safe mode and then used DriverCleaner Pro to hopefully remove anything left over. Rebooted again once again in safe mode and cancelled the attempt for Windows to install the drivers. Ran the agp hotfix 8.12 driver .exe and the drivers (and CCC) installed without issue. Interestingly my card has ID 9505 so I daresay the ordinary cats would have installed as well. Presumably the hotfix allows installation for cards with either 9505 or 9515 IDs. Card running at idle @ 40C and under load as high as 60C. So far so good.
My powercolor car came with the bad id 9515, I reflashed the bios with the newer bios of the powercolor card, id 9505, that solves all driver issues wiht officila ATI releases. Do you want the bios ?
Sticky this Take your cards back, go buy a HIS 3850 iceQ3 and then get the ATI hot fix drivers from their site. Download rivatuner, have fun. uke2: For those of you who don't know this, the best thing to do is a Fresh install with the minimalist amount of drivers for the product you're trying to work with. In most of your cases this seems to be the general problem. I read the first ten posts and the last ten posts. In large, out of all the ATI 3850 models I reviewed none have the proper cooling power that the HIS has and yes you'll have people saying garbage about it, but that's cause they're noobs. The 3850 is a remanufactured PCI express just like the BFG nvidia 7800gs I owned that I replaced with this card you're having so many problems with. Make sure you have the proper power supply to handle the job, do more research and less QQ'n will happen and my god don't use a VGA cable either. If you have anymore questions that you would like answered please feel free to spam me in my inbox and not on the forums. If you found this helpful sticky it in your own words. :stewpid:
Thanks to Xixou's earlier work, I figured out how to Pencil Mod my Powercolor card for 1.4v Vgpu, up from 1.33v. Card is good for 891/981(1962ddr) and about 11600 in 3dmark06 with my Asrock Mobo and e5200 also overclocked. The powercolor has the 2nd best cooler next to the HIS. I also Put a Heatsink on top of the Rialto bridge IC, as I was getting numerous lockups. Interestingly old cpu/mobo combination Asus p4p4800 and Pentium M @ 2.72ghz didn't cause lockups as long as I stayed at 823/954, which I now have put down to the fact that the e5200 is maxing put the video card, whereas in the old system the card was limited by the cpu, even though the cpu was about the most powerful single core cpu when overclocked.
Also 0 problems here i still love that card. All new games no problem with almost full Details. :banana: ...and all that with an aging System far behind those Quadcoreextreme 2x4870x2 guys here I wonder you have overclocked your card? Is it really worth it to take the risk with our CPU´s still bottlenecking the card a little bit? How much 3DMark2006 Points do you get?
Hi Guys! Thank you all for this thread! I think Im going for the shappire, and i think im safe, but better to be sure. My actual system is: DFI LanParty NF3 Ultra-D with chipset nforce 3 ultra Athlon 64 X2 4200+ PSU: Bequiet e5 600w with this specs: Os: Windows XP SP3 I know i have many hot specs like the nforce3+dual core athlon, but running XP only i think im safe; my actual card is a Nvidia 5900 XT, i think it will be a good push up! what do you guys think? Am i taking any risks? Of course im going to saphire only because it seems to have better compatiblity with nforce, worse cooling but what can i do? thank you all for the forum and regards!
Hi there! Performancewise you are taking no risk as the HD3850 AGP will destroy your FX5900 in every situation . The X2 4200+ is not a racer CPU but it is still fast enough for all new games except GTA IV (you must live here with only 15-20 FPS). Also your PSU is more than good enough! There is still a small risk when it gets to compatibility. Some first revisions of the HD3850 cards from Club 3D and Powecolor were not compatible with some motherboard chipsets (i think VIA and NForce). They also don´t worked on my Mobo so i got the Sapphire and everything was alright. The Sapphire seems to be a good bet when it comes to good compatibility. The Powercolor, HIS IceQ and Club3D Version have got better cooling solutions but overclocking is not worth it as these cards are still a little bit bottlenecked by our CPU´s. But if I were you i would get the Sapphire HD3850 AGP
