HD3850 AGP Spotted!

[imperiousleader]

Finally spotted one, thanks to Powercolor.

http://www.powercolor.com/Global/products_features.asp?ProductID=1730

Hopefully ATI will get their act together with their drivers first, 7.13 hopefully?

[Tomofnnh]

Nice!!! Hopefully it will be much faster than a x800xt so I can play Crysis on my IC7-G

[Shell]

That's a nice video card, cooler with a acceptable tradeoff.
Louder at idle, quiter under load; compared to a regular 3850's cooler.
And it's UV sensitive with an LED, too bad it's dual-slot.

I'm amazed AGP is still alive, it must be holding that back to some degree, even though AGP 8x =~= PCIe 8x.

[Albuquerque]

Nice, would spank my card pretty good. And if you're running a single card with 512mb, then I can't imagine the AGP bus really being any sort of notable bottleneck. Now of course, if you somehow had two AGP slots and ran crossfire, it might be a different situation...

[BossBorot]

this surprises me really. AGP has been dieing for ages now but no one will really kill it but not bringing out new stuff. It was good to a point as agp itself is not all that bad but the cpu power of most agp systems is really lacking at this point. But whatever if you want a more expensive 3850 to run with a p4 go ahead and buy it...

[Evilsizer]

or if you one of the rare ones with a Asus board and CT479 adapter with dothan... man that was one sweet setup for its time!!

[malvindo]

nice
my opty 165 9x310 still got company to play with :santa:

[Albuquerque]

this surprises me really. AGP has been dieing for ages now but no one will really kill it but not bringing out new stuff. It was good to a point as agp itself is not all that bad but the cpu power of most agp systems is really lacking at this point. But whatever if you want a more expensive 3850 to run with a p4 go ahead and buy it...

Based on the amount of free CPU time my Presc"hot" 3.0E at 4.2Ghz has while playing Crysis at 1680x1050 at high details on my 512mb 7950GT (hint: quite a bit), I think there's still PLENTY of room for more video card horsepower in the AGP market.

My 7950GT holds me back much further than the 4.2Ghz S478 processor does, especially at 1680x1050 with any notable amount of HDR or AA. Want HDR and AA along with some AF all at the same time? Forget it. Even if it could, it would still be a slide show. A nicely overclocked 3850 on even my little crappy Prescott rig would apply the severe-duty spankitude to multiple games that I currently play; I can only imagine how one of the overclocked A64x2 guys would fare -- obviously even better than me.

[imperiousleader]

Yep, I reckon severely Overclocked P4's, AMD 64's, and My Dothan Pentium M @ 2.7GHZ should be able to make some good use of a HD3850 AGP.
I know for a fact that my old 2.6c @ 3.12 Ghz (max stable speed) was nowhere near the Pentium M for games.
Hopefully some benchmarks will appear in the coming few weeks.

[Evilsizer]

well i had a PM730 @2.4 and it blew away my 3.0c@3.6ghz in gaming...

[-_{MoW}_-Assasi]

:eek: I didnt know they made em in AGP still

[Hipcrostino]

nice one ATI!

[Audioaficionado]

Here's the global online retailer linkage from PowerColor.
http://www.powercolor.com/Global/buy_retailer.asp

I might have to get me one of these if my Xeon duallie is still alive. I haven't tried to post it for almost a year after my Antec TP550 failed due to swelled caps :mad:

[Gabkicks]

would that be of any use to me and my system below?

[malvindo]

Here's the global online retailer linkage from PowerColor.
http://www.powercolor.com/Global/buy_retailer.asp

I might have to get me one of these if my Xeon duallie is still alive. I haven't tried to post it for almost a year after my Antec TP550 failed due to swelled caps :mad:

hmm another victim from Antec, too bad antec Quality decrease so fast :(

1 day my little bro work @ Antec distro, he tried RMA-ed customer,
then boom, the electricity @ that room down, make MCB down,
hard to imagine that happen when 2002 or 2003 era (golden age of antec)

[JDELUNA]

Anyone know if this is availalbe yet ???

[FileAnt]

I saw one on e-bay last week. I am still waiting for mine to arrive (suppose to be this week sometime).

I have a 6800 atm, and despite what people say... after looking in the 3DMark databases, if AGP=PCI-E, this will more than triple my framerates and take load off the cpu (a really really old 3.06HT@3.33). I think there is a chance AGP>PCI-E by 2% anyway. A new pc and cpu would make it 10-20x faster, but it is a bad idea to upgrade now if you have held out, when the pc's in a year or two will be more capable of playing HD games and at far lower watts.

I just need to find a stable dx10 for xp or is there really a new a dx9 coming for xp?

[mcoleg]

hi FileAnt

welcome to the forums :P

sounds like a good plan - i'm thinking to give another chance to my s478 system as well.

i wouldn't worry about dx10 for another year or so; and if you'd ever upgrade this system to vista, it should run just dandy. that's what i am running on mine.

where did you get your 3850 agp, btw?

[FileAnt]

I will tell you how I go when it gets here, I am sure I will test it on lots of benchmarks and games. Sometimes I wonder if it is more fun than playing the games. I have a 3DMark06 license too so can probably link to a report somewhere l8r.

hi FileAnt
where did you get your 3850 agp, btw?
Some dodgy online place that said they were in stock 2 weeks ago - rofl
When I asked "well, were is it?", they said the shipment was coming at the end of Jan so maybe this week or next. One was sold on e-bay in Europe last week so maybe they are out now, who knows.

[imperiousleader]

I just need to find a stable dx10 for xp or is there really a new a dx9 coming for xp?

There is no official dx10 for xp, but check this link out...

http://www.technospot.net/blogs/download-directx-10-for-windows-xp-from-alky-project/

I probably wouldn't try that without first doing a full ghost of c: drive first.

Fileant, I would say you will be cpu limited to some extent, but an AGP HD3850 is still gonna kick butt on Your system compared to the 6800.

[mcoleg]

Some dodgy online place that said they were in stock 2 weeks ago - rofl
When I asked "well, were is it?", they said the shipment was coming at the end of Jan so maybe this week or next. One was sold on e-bay in Europe last week so maybe they are out now, who knows.

i see, cool, tnx

[FileAnt]

Yeah I saw that, I will give it a go, they seemed to give up though, maybe they got a letter from MS ahaha. I have an MSDN subscription as well if it needs extra files. MS released 9.0L for vista so that DX10 works better with DX9 games so it may well be something for the too hard basket if DX10 messes up DX9.0c with dependencies or something.

Edit: Actually I think I will give it a miss rofl. It looks like it is a sort of "compatibility mode" to run DX10 games on DX9 cards, not really useful if it does not use a DX10 cards additional shorter instructions... which is the whole point. I still have not had a close look though.

[Albuquerque]

DX9L is "DirectX 9 for Longhorn", which as many of you know was the codename for Vista before it became, well, Vista.

DX9L is not a superset of DX9 at all, it is simply a DX9 interface on the new WDDM driver model. DX9c has the same effective featureset of DX9L, except that DX9c is the version for Windows XP / 2003. DX9L has some theoretical one-ups on DX9c, only because of the underlying driver model and memory management structure in Vista.

In reality, DX9L / DX9c is a big confusing pile of acronyms that really all amounts to the same thing. Don't let the wierd letters get you off track :)

[ChinStrap]

soo.... any1 know where i could buy this?

[nd4spdbh2]

who still uses agp haha! i guess if theres a market they will build it.

[shadin]

Glad to see this. There's many, many systems out there with AGP slots that have processors powerful enough not to bottleneck GPU-intensive games. A friend of mine still has a 3.0GHz dual-core Opteron on a board with AGP that could use one of these no problem.

[ChinStrap]

****zz, your still going to see a nice bump in FPS if your moving from like a 6800gs to one of these - even if your CPU is like a 2.6 northwood

[moocow]

I want one :(

[Albuquerque]

YOu could still use this GPU on an old crappy 3Ghz Presc"hot" like the one I had a few months ago. Don't think so? Start up Unreal Tournament 3 at 8xAA and 16xAF at 1600x1200 and lemme know how you do ;)

More GPU horsepower is always good!

[FileAnt]

YOu could still use this GPU on an old crappy 3Ghz Presc"hot" like the one I had a few months ago. Don't think so? Start up Unreal Tournament 3 at 8xAA and 16xAF at 1600x1200 and lemme know how you do ;)

More GPU horsepower is always good!

It is an even older Northwood rofl, the entire pc (minus screens) runs at just over 100Watts (about 110 idle and 120 or 130 load.. the watt meter is not very good though). I only need 1680x1050 on DVI one and 1366X768 on the other as HDCP and it will keep me happy for two more years. Being the bargain bin king, I think it will run most games I play fine (I am not a fan of games like UT), but I will let you know if there is a UT3 demo level.

This will be on XP as well, it would be faster on Vista using the directx 10.x which would actually reduce the cpu load somewhat for DX10 games. I would test on Vista, but I do not have the time to set it up atm or any DX10 games.

The other main thing is if it outputs Dolby Digital to the AMP or not, someone said somewhere there is a chance it won't, which is not a biggy... it will still probably send Pro Logic.

[Albuquerque]

This will be on XP as well, it would be faster on Vista using the directx 10.x which would actually reduce the cpu load somewhat for DX10 games. I would test on Vista, but I do not have the time to set it up atm or any DX10 games.
From a pure performance standpoint, Vista doesn't really accelerate anything -- at the moment, neither does DX10. The theory is all sound, but the reality just didn't quite live up to the paper specs ;)

Not saying you should avoid Vista, as I'm a pretty big Vista fanboi -- it's on every PC I own that's less than three years old. But don't convince yourself it's faster, or you'll just be frustrated if/when you move :)

In my limited testing, playing a DX9 game in Vista64 is approximately the same speed as playing the same DX9 game in XP32, with an ever so slight nod to XP32 for performance to the tune of about 1-2%. This is on the rig in my signature (the E8400 one, not the 200mhz AMD one ;))

[wingman99]

HD3850 AGP i would like to upgrade when are they coming out on the market, I have a p4 3.2 and running crysis with no problem also i can bun dvd's in the back ground with hyperthread on.

[Krogen]

this surprises me really. AGP has been dieing for ages now but no one will really kill it but not bringing out new stuff. It was good to a point as agp itself is not all that bad but the cpu power of most agp systems is really lacking at this point. But whatever if you want a more expensive 3850 to run with a p4 go ahead and buy it...

Yeah. In fact, we're getting to a point where a 16 lane PCI Express makes sense (especially with two x2 cards coming very soon). I doubt this will increase performance over 1900XT, which I think is the fastest AGP card out there (and very hard to find!).

[Albuquerque]

Yeah. In fact, we're getting to a point where a 16 lane PCI Express makes sense (especially with two x2 cards coming very soon). I doubt this will increase performance over 1900XT, which I think is the fastest AGP card out there (and very hard to find!).

Well again, it really depends on what you're doing.

Unreal Tournament 2003 plays very well on a P4 + AGP system. But turn up the AA and AF, and it will crawl if you're using enough resolution. While your ability to play "higher end games" may not be massively influenced, your ability to play the same games with higher visual settings will increase with a better video card.

However, if higher resolutions + higher levels of AA + higher levels of AF isn't what you're targetting, then this wouldn't be a great upgrade.

[Krogen]

Unreal Tournament 2003 plays very well on a P4 + AGP system. But turn up the AA and AF, and it will crawl if you're using enough resolution. While your ability to play "higher end games" may not be massively influenced, your ability to play the same games with higher visual settings will increase with a better video card.

A better card won't do anything if you're limited by connection's bandwidth.

We have yet to see benchmarks but I highly doubt that the performance between 1900XT (for example) and 3850 will be significant due to the above reason.

[Evilsizer]

the only single video cards that need a 16x slot would be 3870X2 or the 9800GX2. the only cards the come close to saturating the 8x speed is 8800GTX/U's. after that you cant say the interface doesnt have the bandwidth when pcie 8x = agp 8x for bandwidth one way.

[Albuquerque]

A better card won't do anything if you're limited by connection's bandwidth.

We have yet to see benchmarks but I highly doubt that the performance between 1900XT (for example) and 3850 will be significant due to the above reason.

Why the connection? Are we going to run out of framebuffer or texture storage on a 512mb card? No, we aren't. The bottleneck in the example I gave is pure ROP and ALU limit, it isn't the interface. The only time the interface comes into play is when you "overflow" the local video memory storage, or when you're uploading to (or reading back) data in the video memory.

Even Crysis at high settings at 1680x1050 needs about 350mb of video memory; UT3 is quite assuredly less. And higher resolutions are a very small impact to available video memory; the framebuffer requirements for 2048x1536 at 32-bit color is a whopping 12 megabytes.

So again, the connection will present zero bottleneck issues with UT3 at 2048x1536 at 8xAA and 16xAF. The limit will be entirely the GPU. And as such, it will show phenominal gains in performance when moving from a 12-ROP, 48-ALU 8-TEX part like the x1900Pro versus the 16-ROP, 320-ALU, 16-TEX part like the 3850.

[wingman99]

Why the connection? Are we going to run out of framebuffer or texture storage on a 512mb card? No, we aren't. The bottleneck in the example I gave is pure ROP and ALU limit, it isn't the interface. The only time the interface comes into play is when you "overflow" the local video memory storage, or when you're uploading to (or reading back) data in the video memory.

Even Crysis at high settings at 1680x1050 needs about 350mb of video memory; UT3 is quite assuredly less. And higher resolutions are a very small impact to available video memory; the framebuffer requirements for 2048x1536 at 32-bit color is a whopping 12 megabytes.

So again, the connection will present zero bottleneck issues with UT3 at 2048x1536 at 8xAA and 16xAF. The limit will be entirely the GPU. And as such, it will show phenominal gains in performance when moving from a 12-ROP, 48-ALU 8-TEX part like the x1900Pro versus the 16-ROP, 320-ALU, 16-TEX part like the 3850.


I have LCD and my limit is 1280x1024 i should be fine.

[Albuquerque]

I have LCD and my limit is 1280x1024 i should be fine.

I'd generally agree, your bottleneck is the display device ;) You could still swamp an x1900Pro at high AA / AF settings with a game that supports HDR, but the gains you'd see at that resolution probably would still be relatively small.

[FileAnt]

From a pure performance standpoint, Vista doesn't really accelerate anything -- at the moment, neither does DX10. The theory is all sound, but the reality just didn't quite live up to the paper specs ;)

Not saying you should avoid Vista, as I'm a pretty big Vista fanboi -- it's on every PC I own that's less than three years old. But don't convince yourself it's faster, or you'll just be frustrated if/when you move :)

In my limited testing, playing a DX9 game in Vista64 is approximately the same speed as playing the same DX9 game in XP32, with an ever so slight nod to XP32 for performance to the tune of about 1-2%. This is on the rig in my signature (the E8400 one, not the 200mhz AMD one ;))

My point was theory I suppose, however I did say DX10.x games should be faster if you had DX10.x installed and a DX10.x card. I had read DX9 games were mildly slower or about the same on vista.

to some of the other posts...
Lets not turn this into an AGP vs PCIe bandwidth thread there are dozens of such threads. AGP was shown to about equal PCIe on the test I saw. An old duel channel DDR pc like mine has the bandwidth for most games, my guess is the cpu will struggle to keep things smooth on some games which rely on the cpu heavily for some operations. So in other words the CPU will be able to send fast enough but will not be able to calculate fast enough... and installing vista would give me DX10.1 which would solve the problem for some new DX10.1 games as long as they did not have extra jobs for the CPU (which I imagine they would).

[Evilsizer]

HD3850 AGP i would like to upgrade when are they coming out on the market, I have a p4 3.2 and running crysis with no problem also i can bun dvd's in the back ground with hyperthread on.

well depending on the video card you have now your not gonna see that big of a gain in FPS. as the cpu is the bottleneck my old P4 3.0C@3.6ghz was the bottleneck for a 6600GT@1280x1024. 3dmark reflected this big time esp when compared to my PM730@2.4ghz with the same card/res. the more eff Dothan core vs netburst was big boost in gaming. if you have a asus board check out the section on the asus site about the CT-479. that with a oced or even stock dothan chip with the new 3850 will yeild a bigger gain for you gaming then just adding the GPU.

[Albuquerque]

My point was theory I suppose, however I did say DX10.x games should be faster if you had DX10.x installed and a DX10.x card. I had read DX9 games were mildly slower or about the same on vista.
DX9 games on Vista were slower eons ago due to crap video and audio drivers; this is no longer the case in the grand majority of games. DX9 on Vista is (within the margin of testing error) the same speed as DX9 on XP. And since DX10 doesn't exist on XP, then it's a no brainer on that side of the equation ;)

And regardless of API or interface, a faster video card will provide better performance in high resolution + high AA + high AF situations. You can attempt to make a case about what will happen when video memory runs out, but that will affect old and new cards alike, and will affect all API's and interfaces in a similar way. If a PCI-E 2.0 card runs out of video memory and must start drawing from system memory, it's going to be a stuttery mess in the same way it would on AGP.

[Albuquerque]

well depending on the video card you have now your not gonna see that big of a gain in FPS. as the cpu is the bottleneck my old P4 3.0C@3.6ghz was the bottleneck for a 6600GT@1280x1024. 3dmark reflected this big time esp when compared to my PM730@2.4ghz with the same card/res. the more eff Dothan core vs netburst was big boost in gaming. if you have a asus board check out the section on the asus site about the CT-479. that with a oced or even stock dothan chip with the new 3850 will yeild a bigger gain for you gaming then just adding the GPU.

I think you're still missing my point. 3DMark "scores" consider the raw CPU performance at 100% utilization. Games do not always peg your processor out at 100% utilization.

Please stop thinking about the CPU for thirty seconds, and consider this: What was a game that your CPU ran great? Howabout Unreal 2003? Or Oblivion? Or maybe STALKER?

Now, take that same game and add 8xAA and 16xAF through the control panel. And now also play it at 2048x1536. Would your 6600GT play any of these games at any reasonable framerate, even on an octal-core Penryn 8800 Extreme?

No. The CPU isn't the bottleneck when you're playing at high resolutions + high AA + high AF. You seem to continually miss this point, and yet this is the point I've mentioned about a half-dozen times. Yes, games need CPU power, but after a certain range of video settings your CPU is no longer the bottleneck.

At 1024x768 and 0xAA and 0xAF, your Pentium 4 3.6Ghz CPU will be the bottleneck in nearly every game available.

At 1680x1050 and 4xAA and 16xAF, even a 1900Pro is going to have framerate issues. Your CPU will be capable of far higher framerates than your graphics card.

THE LATTER EXAMPLE is what I've been discussing all along.

[imperiousleader]

3DMARK 01 is a good test of cpu power with modern video cards, as the video card is barely idling.
With my old P4 2.6c@3.13 ghz, the best I got was about 19500 with my 7800gs
with my Dothan 1.73@2.71ghz, I get over 31500 with the same video card.

Thats a 62% increase all thanks to a more powerful cpu.

[FileAnt]

3DMARK 01 is a good test of cpu power with modern video cards, as the video card is barely idling.
With my old P4 2.6c@3.13 ghz, the best I got was about 19500 with my 7800gs
with my Dothan 1.73@2.71ghz, I get over 31500 with the same video card.

Thats a 62% increase all thanks to a more powerful cpu.

That is not a good test at all, because 3DMARK01 is using DX7 and old cpu instructions etc (depending on what version of 3DMARK01 you run). So you are not seeing the effect of the newer instuctions on newer cpu's. And Nvidia and ATI cheated it anyway... check this out... http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/antidetect/index.html
by the looks not just one or two benchmarks but a whole host of them.

The games x2 and x3 would be the best real world test atm (and it is fun to watch a few times). They also provide a range of frames/s values. For an old PC with a good graphics card, the greater of this range would be Graphics card intensive scenes, the lower the cpu intensive scenes.

[Evilsizer]

ALB you are very side tracked.. do me a favor reread the persons post that i responded to. im still tring to figure out how my 1280x1024 res i used on said system = 1024x768 in you post. since said person i quoted has a screen that can do 1280x1024.
last time i checked ALB stalker/UT3/Oblivion where not out back in 05. not to mention the main key factor at the cpu doing work back then was superpi 1m, so 30sec vs 50 for the speed difference. also the dothan's were in what started the GAMING LAPTOP. Your telling me then ALB P4 = a gaming cpu vs A64? benches show A64 PWN'S P4's,dothan in games was = A64 with same video card. how its not the cpu when said card is 6800GT or higher is not the bottleneck is what you havent answered. you cover one uber low res that some people still do play at and then one that some play at, then one res that NO one plays at.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/181/6/

if benchmarks of gaming setups show higher fps with a different cpu vs a P4. then i want a refund on every video card i bought and expect to be able to play ever game butter smooth with a 7300GS on a P3-933. based on what your saying then....

[wingman99]

ALB you are very side tracked.. do me a favor reread the persons post that i responded to. im still tring to figure out how my 1280x1024 res i used on said system = 1024x768 in you post. since said person i quoted has a screen that can do 1280x1024.
last time i checked ALB stalker/UT3/Oblivion where not out back in 05. not to mention the main key factor at the cpu doing work back then was superpi 1m, so 30sec vs 50 for the speed difference. also the dothan's were in what started the GAMING LAPTOP. Your telling me then ALB P4 = a gaming cpu vs A64? benches show A64 PWN'S P4's,dothan in games was = A64 with same video card. how its not the cpu when said card is 6800GT or higher is not the bottleneck is what you havent answered. you cover one uber low res that some people still do play at and then one that some play at, then one res that NO one plays at.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/181/6/

if benchmarks of gaming setups show higher fps with a different cpu vs a P4. then i want a refund on every video card i bought and expect to be able to play ever game butter smooth with a 7300GS on a P3-933. based on what your saying then....

It's a easy test i do it all the time with new games i down clock my p4 3.2 to see where i start lowering my fps. The most demanding thing i found in all the new games is how many players or AI players you have also AI players are equal to the same CPU, FPS loss as just players.

So i have found that new games are not over demanding of my cpu however the videocard is

Lets be realistic the games have not changed much with CPU plotting to GPU in the past 5 years. The newest thing i have seen playing crysis is you can cut the trees in half with a gun.

however the GPU does all the new eye candy graphics.

[Evilsizer]

it would be easy if i owned the same rig in a year... let alone the same cpu in 3-6months..

[Albuquerque]

ALB you are very side tracked.. do me a favor reread the persons post that i responded to. im still tring to figure out how my 1280x1024 res i used on said system = 1024x768 in you post. since said person i quoted has a screen that can do 1280x1024.
*sigh*

I'm not talking about your system. We already talked about your system, I already said that it's not going to do YOU any good, beause of the small resolution you play out -- remember? I can go quote myself if you've forgotten.

I'm talking about people who play at high resolutions

I'm talking about people who play with high AA

I'm talking about people who play with high AF

If you aren't one of these people, then the 3850 will do you no good.

If you ARE ONE OF THESE PEOPLE, the 3850 will do you a lot of favors NO MATTER WHAT CPU YOU HAVE OR WHAT BUS IT PLUGS INTO.

Your CPU doesn't make high resolution go faster.

Your CPU doesn't make AA go faster.

Your CPU doesn't make AF go faster.

That's as plain as I can make it for you.

[Bearcat99]

I've got a Fx-60 w 2Gs of RAM on a Gigabyte K-8... 600W PS.. with a X850 currently.. I was thinking of getting a 1950Pro.. but I may just go with this if I can get it for a decent price. Do you think Im just dreaming or do you think it is worth it...

[Hazaro]

The real question is if it is $300

[FileAnt]

Edit:hmmm they changed the message back... delete

[FileAnt]

The real question is if it is $300

For me it is. Although i have never spent more than $150 for a card b4, this should keep my system happy till the MB explodes. I ordered some games yesterday on ebay that people normally bench with so I will do them if they arrive in time. Given my system is about as old as you would want to go it will probably give ppl a good idea of the low low low end performance.