isvikthere's Full Review: Sapphire RADEON HD3850, (512 MB) AGP Video Card
OK, so like me you are a sucker still stuck with an older PC, and old here means a system that doesn't have one or more PCI-express video cardslots yet. Yes, we for our graphic solution are still stuck with the brown AGP slot placed somewhere in the middle of our computer motherboards.
But then on the shelves you see these nice new games (e.g. Bioshock Crysis, and Portal in 2007 and Far Cry 2, GTA 4, S.T.A.L.K.E.R and others this year) you would still like to be able to play, but this without having to go out and buy a completely new gamer system with top of the range multicore processor, single or doubled up PCI-graphics card and new type of memory, which would set you back hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Well then you have two options : either you abandon the PC game scene altogether and go out and buy a console, in this respect I think the Xbox 360 prices have now reached a sweet spot where it costs almost less than this Graphics board, or you try and find out what it takes for your old puter to still be able to run the game acceptably.
Anyway, since I am reviewing this card I still haven't gone the console route yet and decided to invest some hard earned cash in the best video solution that is available today for the now outdated AGP cardslot.
This Radeon HD3850 is undisputedly the most powerful video card for the AGP slot you can buy today, so here are its specs :
SAPPHIRE HD 3850 512MB GDDR3 AGP
666 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process AGP 4X/8X bus interface 256-bit GDDR3 memory interface Ring Bus Memory Controller Fully distributed design with 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads and writes Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support Shader Model 4.1 32-bit floating point texture filtering Indexed cube map arrays Independent blend modes per render target Pixel coverage sample masking Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders Gather4 texture fetching Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture 320 stream processing units Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors 128-bit floating point precision for all operations Command processor for reduced CPU overhead Shader instruction and constant caches Up to 80 texture fetches per clock cycle Up to 128 textures per pixel Fully associative multi-level texture cache design DXTC and 3Dc texture compression High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192) Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1) Lossless color compression (up to 8:1) 8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support Physics processing support Dynamic Geometry Acceleration High performance vertex cache Programmable tessellation unit Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance Anti-aliasing features Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel) Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling Temporal anti-aliasing Gamma correct Super AA (ATI CrossFire™ configurations only) All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering Texture filtering features 2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel) 128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering Bicubic filtering sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma) Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF) Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support OpenGL 2.0 support ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats High definition (HD) playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats Hardware MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX video decode acceleration Motion compensation and IDCT ATI Avivo Video Post Processor Color space conversion Chroma subsampling format conversion Horizontal and vertical scaling Gamma correction Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing De-blocking and noise reduction filtering Detail enhancement Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction) Bad edit correction Two independent display controllers Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display Full 30-bit display processing Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays Fast, glitch-free mode switching Hardware cursor Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI) Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x1536 Integrated AMD Xilleon™ HDTV encoder Provides high quality analog TV output (component/S-video/composite) Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions Underscan and overscan compensation MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time VGA mode support on all display outputs ATI PowerPlay™ Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings Performance-on-Demand Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario Clock and memory speed throttling Voltage switching Dynamic clock gating Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required Some custom resolutions require user configuration HDCP support for playback of protected content requires connection to a HDCP capable display
And for all that this is what the card asks in return from its host system :
System Requirements: AGP based PC is required with one 4X/8X AGP slot available on the motherboard. 1GB or greater system memory for better performance. 450Watt or greater power supply with 30Amps on 12 volt with 2x4 power connector recommanded.
The Bottom Line
The only thing you need to remember from all this is that this card from the Radeon 3800 series - which is the generation before last (last being the currently highly acclaimed Radeon 4800 series) in the current AMD/Ati Radeon lineup - featuring Ati's RV670 Pro Graphics chip, comes with all latest bell and whistles and with no less than 512 Megabytes of on-board ultrafast memory. It can simultaneously pilot two screens at top resolutions through its two onboard DVI connectors and has an extra S-VGA connector.
What this all boils down to is that when you do go out and venture to play the latest games it will normally not be this videocard that will hold back game performance but most likely your computer processor, that will normally be the single core Intel or AMD processor that was paired up with the AGP slot on your motherboard.
So as also mentionned in my review of the game here on Epinions, after installing the latest AMD/Ati Radeon Catalyst driver I was perfectly able to play the Far Cry 2 game, the only time the game started to stutter a bit was in battle scenes where the computer generated opposition caused the game to lag. I don't blame this videocard for that but the processor and the subsystem which have now clearly become the bottlenecks in the datastream, holding the card and overall 3D performance back.
Packaging
The card comes in a not so big cardboard box decorated with a rather modest Lara Croft type of game figurine and the necessary brand logos. In the modest box you'll find besides the video card itself :
- two power splitters that provide the connectors to the card which are non-standard, - a small paper quick installation guide - a DVI-to VGA video port adapter - a drivers CD - a Svga to YMK adaptor cable
And that's about it, well it is all you need to get underway anyway. The card is rather big and heavy and its cooling solution is placed underneath, facing down once the card is installed and is such that you no longer will be able to use the first white PCI-slot located under the AGP slot in which the card is installed. With its extra power connectors on either side the card sticks out rather far at the rear which in smaller towers could hinder access to the drive bays. Luckily on my MSI motherboard the memory slots are situated well above the AGP slot in such a way that the card doesn't interfere with them. But I would be really surprised if this card would fit any MediaCenter type of PC or any other smaller form factor.
There is no sense in publishing comparative test results for this card, it is simply and undoubtedly the best card there is to have today for AGP. With the latest enhancements to their latest catalyst driver ATI/AMD have made sure that this card supports even the last of the games currently out and will perform to to the best of its ability in the PC system it is lodged in.
Conclusion Kudos to Sapphire and Ati/AMD for at least still offering us the possibilty - there is absolutely no comparable offering in the Nvidia range of Video Cards. It is by no means the cheapest solution to chicken out of a complete PC changeover, but honestly I find it all in all not really that expensive for such a modern powerhouse bringing you up-to-date in all latest video technologies;
And, as already said, if after your purchase you will still struggle with the latest of computer games or the showing of high definition (HD) content most likely it will not be this card that is to blame but the old gits (motherboard, processor, memory) it has been forced to team up with. So the decision is yours and if ever you do take the plunge you can be sure that you did your best to give your old hack that very last and maybe even ultimate lease in life and it will certainly give all the older games you still like to play a real adrenaline shot and a thorough makeover, allowing you now to maybe activate these image enhancement options you had to do without up until now and this at bigger resolutions than ever before.
Of one thing you can be dead sure, this card will never be reused in a newer sytem since AGP is definitely old school.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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