Sapphire HD 3850 AGP Card

[Rachet]

I want to upgrade my system with a Radeon hd 3850 agp card and want to know if my PS is powerful enough.

I can't afford to buy a new system, video card is $85 AR at the Egg.

System:

PIV 3.2 Northwood
Asus P4P800 SE motherboard
2 gig OCZ 3200 memory
XP Pro sp2

 

[wwswimming]

that's a decent power supply.

it will power the 3850 allright.

 

[Creig]

Considering the fact that I installed a 3870 into a friend's Dell with a 300W PS and it has been going strong for a year and a half now, I think you'll be fine.

 

[Stumps]

yes you will be fine, I recently installed that card into my AGP E4300 rig using the same PSU.

However as a side note, that card is extreme overkill for that system, you won't even get close to utilising the full performance of a 3850 with a P4.

 

[Ileader36]

My old system had the Powercolor HD3850 with P4P800 dlx and a CT479 Pentium M
adaptor, with Pentium M 740 @ 2.72GHZ.

Even that was bottlenecking the Video card, a max 3dmark06 of about 7700.
My current rig with same video card did a best of 12010, now I am Video card
bottlenecked.

 

[TemjinGold]

Depending on the video card you have now, that might not be worth the upgrade since AGP is a dead socket.

 

[snouter]

I run a 3850 with an Earthwatts 500w no problems.

 

[Rachet]

I had an ATI AIW X800XT whcih I returned for warranty service and they
sent me a replacement of an ATI AIW X800xl.

I noticed a significant drop in performance with the 800xl

I use to be able to play battlefield 2 without a problem with the xt

Thanks for the responses

 

[Barfo]

They should have sent you an equal or better card, you should dispute that RMA.

 

[brblx]

the difference between those cards is absolutely miniscule. either should run BF2 well at medium settings.

 

[F1shF4t]

That psu is overkill for your system. Considering I had a 380 watt Earthwatts easily run a 8800gtx with dually core 2.

 

[Rachet]

Yes I should have disputed the the card they sent.

I mention my dissatisfaction because I want people to realize what kind of practices

ATI uses when dealing with customer warrantys.

I've bought a lot of PC equipment for my kids when they were in college and

have needed warranty/support work by Asus, Abit, Visiontek, and I was very pleased

with all of their support.


Your responses about my new PS makes me feel more at ease about my buying a

Sapphire HD 3850, I just wish there was an equally powerful card

with an Nvidia based chipset.

Thanks for your help

 

[Denithor]

I had an 8800GTS 512MB and an 8800GS on one motherboard powered by an EA500 for several months (folding - high stress for GPUs and constant high pull from PSU) with zero problems. Now have the EA500 running just the 8800GTS (second system in my sig) and it's completely solid, been running that way for >6 months (folding constantly).

 

[Rachet]

Well I got the PS and Sapphire HD 3850 working okay.

The only thing I find that is annoying is that the fan on the video card, starts and stops,
a constant surging and stopping, even when the system is idle.

Could this be the drivers?