i have the radeon 3850 diamond viper 256mb video card. I'm satisfied with how its running, its very quiet even when gaming or just idle with windows applications. The thing i don't really appreciate is the FPS drops i get in the games i'm trying to play. For example, i'm trying to play TF2 at 1440x900 mostly high settings and i'm getting a good 60-100FPS, but it stoops down to 20-40FPS during caotic combat, or just looking at a vast landscape. For bioshock, even when i play at 1024x768 windowed mode, i get pretty terrible FPS, regardless of HIGH or MEDIUM settings. My question is, am i expecting too much from my radeon 3850? i have the CCC 7.11 i believe. SInce i just bought my gfx card i'm wondering how much louder is this video card is, the palit geforce 8800GT it says from tweaktown, that it has a DB of ~60, so would that be that much louder than aradeon 3850? call me a soundaphile but i HATE the noise, but does having ~20DB more than a radeon3850 ( i think it has a DB of 40) really have significant difference?
I don't think an 8800gt is 60 dB, but a difference of 3 dB is pretty big actually. You might even be able to notice the difference of only 1 dB. The 8800gt is a little louder than a 3850 though, especially at high speed.
I read a lot of problems about the 3850's. I find it strange since I have a 3850 and all I did was installed it, reformatted windows and then installed the latest ATi drivers and I haven't had any problems what-so-ever. Either I'm a very lucky user or people are doing something wrong with their 3850's. I can have my fan speed down to 25% ( lowest ) and can play COD 4 , Unrealtournament , WoW , Warcraft III , GTA San Andreas , Call Of Duty 2 , Call Of Duty 1 , Call Of Duty United offensive , and ALL of the steam games at highest whether I'm in a heavy battle or not doesn't effect my card one bit. I play at 1024 x 768 with a 17" CRT monitor.
i also got a 3850 and i havent got any probs too... exept it gest 90 degree's but they say its normal^^
No problems in here. I run Oblivion Ultra High Details 1152x864 with HDRI + 4X AA forced + 16X Antrosopic filterings. I use shadowland maps and other graphic enchantments in Oblivion and I have no problems with the game how smooth it goes. Sometimes when I am on out side in Imperial city and Jump high so it draws lot's of landscape to towards Jerall mountains and lake, I might get small frame drop. But generally, even when fighting against 12 undeads at the same time in ayleid city I don't get shudders or lag. That is pretty good imho.
I have manually set my fan at 55%, its still barely audible over my CPU HSF, and after a heavy game session with ambient of 25C approx, I'm still not reaching 70C. As for FPS drops, haven't had any issues, I finished HL2 again on the weekend (had to replay it with the 3850), at 16x12, full detail and 16xAF and 4xAA still got over 100FPS, couple of dips to around 70FPS I think, but no noticeable stutters in the FPS.
is there any difference in brands of the HD3850? what drivers are you guys using? i don't know, i just feel like mine is underperforming, but i have no one who plays TF2 to put my observations into perspective
I am using latest 7.12 Ati drivers. Club 3D is as basic rebranded Ati as it can be. Stock clocks and everything. Only Ati sticker has been changed into Club 3D logo.
With my system(specs on right) while playing TF2 with 1280x1024 with everything high, texture very high, 6xaa and 16xaf, I get between 20-80 fps. Mostly it runs between 40-60 fps, but sometimes it dips down to 20(propably because of the rest of my system). I think TF2 and7.12 drivers has some optimatization problems with the game, but I love the game and it doesn't bother me.
i don't see what the big deal is with everyone reformatting their computers just to install a new driver? i had an integrated geforce graphics card, and i just used the driver cleaner pro? is that sufficient?
should be, I went from ATI to Nvidia and back to ATI again without reinstalling windows and I have no troubles at all.
