Powercolor AGP HD 3850

If the fan doesn't turn on, simply do an RMA, is never a good idea to use the fan at 100% all the time because it will cut the fan bearing's life in half easily, meaning that the fan will fail sooner than later, if you cannot get an RMA, use an aftermarket cooler.

 

It runs cooler than mine which can reach 82C under load at 800MHz Core and the fan running at 70%, even if the fan is at 100%, it made little difference thanks to the fake "copper" heatsinks on the GPU which obviously is not copper, is aluminium.

 

I suspect the placement of the heatsinks and fan are a weak point in the PowerColour assembly line.

When I got my card I slightly tightened the bolts... make sure you a confident before you do this... I use a tension ratchet to avoid (some possible) human error... there is still a danger of over tightening though and cracking the card/chip/solder. Also earth yourself and the ratchet (even just every minute or two to a tap if you are lazy like me) and avoid touching any conductive parts.. like the slot contacts.

Maybe re-seat it with some Arctic Silver. I usually wait a few years before I bother, unless it is bad as sometimes you can damage things ripping up a heatsink.

 

It is an aftermarket cooler that I'm using and I'm powering it by the graphics board itself however, the board is just turning the fan at 19% speed...

I used to just leave the fan in performance mode (i.e. 100% speed) before I changed where the fan was being powered from...

Now please does someone know how to permamently change the fan speed without the use of third party programs?

 

Thinking of buying the 3850 AGP

I went around the forums to check out this card and see if there were any outstanding issues with it and right now whats being said on these forums worry me plenty.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=14&l3=67&l4=0&model=235&modelmenu=1

That's my asus motherboard right now with 1gb mem
Using a 500watts plus antec
CPU is a AMD64 3000+

Anyone with the same systems as me can comment on how this works with the 3850AGP? Should i take powercolor or sapphire?

Was also thinking i should just get a X1950XT. Should i get that instead of the more expensive sapphire? Just in case you're wondering about the X1950XT, here's a link.

http://kuroutoshikou.com/modules/display/?iid=960

I'm not much of a gamer and just play WoW on my computer. Only issue I have been coming up is slow fps and such and even crashing of the game during gameplay. Currently using a 22inch wide 1680 X1050 LCD which I believe my current card simply is unable to use? I can't be sure since I was playing Guildwars just great on this vidcard until i decided to play WoW

Any help

 

The problem with some motherboards is the chipset...
use this bios (or newer)
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock754/k8v_se_dx/K8vsedx07.zip
(see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=302902)

two possible extra helper solutions...
1/ the sapphire board may work best (people say this works with some MB's)
2/ the 9505 bios may work best on the PowerColor for some people (No one has really worked out if this is the real reason the sapphire works).. you can get it from TechPowerUp BIOS collection

 

sorry.. double post!

 

I would use RBE, but plug it into the Motherboard if you don't want to use RBE and want 100% speed. 100% speed is pretty pointless though.. there will be a point of diminishing return as far as cooling goes, combined with the noise and wear (as others pointed out). It also make the cooler act even more like a vacuum cleaner collecting dust (which can be good i spose, if you clean it every now and again)

Ahhh, I just remembered there is an ATI XML file the 48xx guys use... you could try reading up on how to edit this... RBE also has an interface for editing this file... it is ATI driver dependent though so if ATI change the format...

 

Yeah, I was able to flash my HIS Card with the ATi BIOS with the 9505 ID and now the official driver works, but the Overdrive function doesn't but that's ok since I already modified the BIOS to set my own clocks and the Powerplay settings works fine, also I modified fan settings to improve the cooling a bit. It should work on the other HD 3850 AGP.

 

This much we know, as we have intel chipsets... I was meaning the non-intel chipsets people actually had trouble with

 

My 2 weekish ? PSU just stopped working, (500w), probly bad PSU it was much lighter then my other one 300W

Hasty as I am I just asume my Motherboard for some reason gave up bc the PSU still made the online button to light up when I "started" the computer so I went ahead and ordered almost complete new rigg lol, then I got the cleaver Idea to swtich PSU and the computer booted right up, though I did not try with my 3850,,

Could it have been the 3850 putting too much stress on the PSU or should it just shut down? I'm wondering if its worth sending back to get a new one and sell the rigg but I dont wanna sell it if the PSU gonna screw it up for the new owner

Now I ordered a HIS 4870 512GDDR 5 with 4gb ram PC6400 and a Q6600 I hope I can play FSX with PMDG now lol

 

Good Day,
I have following errors with a AGP Graphic card / Motherboard. Maybe someone here can help on this

error description:
1)Most times , at power on the system is not recognizing the graphic card, there is no image. I have to press Power button several times until it recognises the card.
2)Next, at the Windows XP Boot Manager there are white bars under each line os the boot OS choices, There should be only one (Cursor). After pressing enter for booting the chosen OS, next screen is White. Should be Black.
3) Sometimes at Power ON there is a continuous Beep.Again, I have to press the power button several times until the card is recognized correctly.
These are obviously Hardware issues.

I Have tried several PSU, even one Corsair 650W. I have tried diferent RAM Modules ( DDR400 and DDR2 667). The configuration is minimal : Motherboard, Graphic Card, RAM, HD,Floppy

4)In DX9 ( 3DMark05), after running for some seconds it crashes with a VPU recover, rebooting, freezes.
5)Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0, severe image corruption. There duplicated vertical bars.
6)In FSX, is crahsing.

A DX9 workaround, but still there are severe errors with FSX , is disabling "AGP Reads " and also changing the 3D Settings to "Optimal Quality" in Catalyst Crontol Centern 8.7. Like this , 3DMark is running with no issues, but in FSX there are still heavy image corruption ending with a chrash followed by a reboot and sometimes there is BSOD (Blue Screen).

The components of PC are :
- Motherboard ASROCK 4 CoreDual SATA2 R2.0 .- BIOS P2.0
- Powercolor HD3850 AGP 512MB DDR3
- PSU: Gigabyte Oddin 550w
- RAM 2x1024MB DDRII 667MHz Corsair
-CPU Core 2 Duo E7200

I already tried all available driver´s even the ones that came with card. Also the AGP hotfixes.

For three times I could get 15200 Points on 3DMark05.

Curious is also the fact that with the 3D Settings at "Performance" and "AGP Reads"=Off I get 10000 3DMark05 ponts. With 3D settings at "Optimal quality" I get 12000 3DMark05 points.
Regards

 

Adalwar, do you use the 6 Pin PCI-E Power Cable of the your Psu or use the adapter that came in bundled??

 

For 1) The motherboard is not waiting for the card to get caps from 12V section powered properly during the post of the card. I recon it is sort of the fault of the MB/VidCard and PSU combined. Some of the other problems may be related. Mine does this as well sometimes without Pallet Snoop on, with Pallet Snoop on it has never failed to boot. If you have VGA Palette Snoop.. turn it on and see if it posts cold.
Maybe try this (don't know why it would work... maybe the ASRock has cached the card boot timings for a previous card)...
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ock-4coredual-vsta-blank-screen.html#post9495

 

esticbo, indeed, using the PCIE power cord that come with Card seems to be the reason fot the beeping / card not being recognised at boot. I do not understnad this as the wiring lokks the same. Maybe a bad connector.
Because of power cord I spend many hours again testing the system and the result is that there is no way to get card working, it just keeps crashing/Freezing/Reboots in DX9 App( fsx and 3dmark05).
I tested the Asrock BIOS 1.80 and 1.90, but they do not recognise CPU correctly and the crash problem still the same. I did short jumper to reset CMOS data.
With those BIOS there are no white Bars / white screen at Boot Manager,
so it is asrock bios p 2.00 problem, I believe.
I tested also a Powercolor X1600 Pro, 512MB also AGP, and it also crashes, freezes, reboots.
With a Clube 3D 9800SE 256bits, everything works fine.
In the mean time I test a PCIE HD 3850, but the card has 700MHZ memory clock and it needs that I set sytem RAM to 333MHz otherwise FSX crashes.
In 3DMark05 I get less 200 points than the AGP version, but in FSX, with same configuration I get FPS level of the X1600. Why is this ?

 

I am not quite clear on what you are asking. For that MB the PCIe1.1 is 1000MB/s, AGP is 2100MB/s on the bus.

Maybe try increasing the AGP aperture size and the AGP voltage in the MB bios.
I think it is something to do with the power though... maybe the MB or Card is faulty in this regard.

EDIT.. also make sure your PCI/AGP is not overclocked and is locked in the MB bios. You could try flashing the BIOS to the 9505 one.. see back a few pages

 

It is working! Finnaly I got the Powercolor HD 3850 AGP to work on the AsRock board!
I have removed and installed some pieces of software, unintalled cat 8.8, reboot in save mode, run cat-uninstaller and reboot.
Then I installed the driver from CAT 8.1, ONLY the driver!
Also, in MB Bios there is an option "AGP 3.0 CAllibration" that I think must be off!.
The system is running now very stable and as espected, there are no issues, just the white bars at boot but who cares about it.
15210 3DMark05 Points, CPU over 6200 points.
I am very pleased now with the system.
It must have been a Software / Driver / BIOS issue.


Thanks for the help.
Regards

 

I am trying to choose between the HIS HD 2600XT:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161207

or the Powercolor HD 3850:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131090

There is only a $15 difference between the two! Is there any reason then to get the 2600XT even though my rig is only a P4 3ghz with 1.5gb of DDR 400 memory? I'm just wondering whether my old computer will pose such a bottleneck that I wouldn't see a difference between the 2600XT and the 3850?

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=2835532&postcount=5