SAPPHIRE 100228L Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready Video Card

Pros: Fast & Stable.
No problems in 3+ years ownership.
Mine runs fine Over Clocked @ 709Mhz GPU Core & 739Mhz Memory Clock.

Cons: Power Hungry.
Must have 30 AMPS on 12V Rail to run FULL speed.

Other Thoughts: A must...
Download the latest "AGP Hotfix Driver" from AMD for the card to work correctly.

Pros: Radeon 3850 HD - fastest AGP card to date (or ever?). Many thanks to Sapphire for releasing AGP version.

Runs latest games on high settings with decent framerate on my ancient 6 year old system.

Sapphire support has been great, they are still releasing hotfixed drivers for this AGP card as soon as new ATI Catalyst drivers are released.

I've had this card for almost 2 years now, and never had any problems.

Cons: None

Pros: Works, had problems with driver install but who did at first when these hit the streets...

Cons: driver cd at the time I got mine was useless

Other Thoughts: could have planed for the release of these cards and had a driver cd that was worth packing with the card.

bought my 3850 AGP beginning of 2009 so its been awhile since I had mine and its still working fine

Pros: I needed an AGP 8X card that would play some of the 2006-2007 games in my LAN.
I'm excited to say Quake Wars, Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress 2 all run wonderfully. I could increase all the texture and detail settings to high and keep a fairly high resolution.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: It does require an 8 pin power connector, but did supply an adapter for two molex connectors. I am using a 450watt Enermax power supply and it works great.

Pros: Nice card. A bit pricey for an AGP, but they all are now, aren't they? You'll love the 256 bit bandwidth over the newer 4000 series. Overclocks well with ATI Tray - it's Riva Tuner on steroids; got the core clock to 783 (from 668, changed the voltage) and the memory to 900 (from 828), and you can use profiles to clock when you play a game and unclock it when you close the game. Fan speed is controllable as well. Very cool!

Cons: Ordered it early morning Thursday, didn't get it until late afternoon Tuesday. It took 12 hours to get it from the warehouse to UPS? Come on newegg, that's pretty bad. Documentation was a joke, but if you know PC's, you can figure it out. Card IS a bit long, but I cleared everything in my mid case just fine. Be prepared to do some moving if you have a tight case, and don't even think about slugging this into a mini ATX case.

Other Thoughts: Had a minor issue with the TV out; apparently DVI port 2 and the TV out port are shared, which is not explained in any documentation. After about 2 hours of Googling (yep, it's a verb now), I found the answer, and all is well now. Didn't use the drivers on disc, but got the Catalyst 9.11 WHQL's from guru3d dot com; these seemed to be good for what I do. With a P4 3.00 OC'd to 3.47, and the ATI Tray program, I'm getting about 20-25 FPS in GTA IV, 1024x768 res, Med Textures and everything else on low. Not bad for a 5+ year old machine!

Make SURE you have an adequate power supply for this card: I got a 550wt BFG and luckily it came with a 6+2 PCIe connector, so all is well here. If you don't have the connector, a 2X4 pin molex adapter is included. Also comes with a VGA/DVI adapter and S-Video to component dongle. Heck, it even has a S-Video to composite plug! Nice deal all around, great for an old PC to become an HTPC!

Pros: I've had this for more than one year and it has not failed me yet. This card is able to play Crysis on medium/high graphic settings with my AsRock 4coreDual motherboard sporting an e7500 processor and 2 gigs of Ram at a resolution of 1440x900.

This being my first ATI video card, I was first worried about ATI Drivers and the Catalyst Control Center. But neither are bad at all once you figure the Catalyst Control Center out. That being said, I actually prefer the CCC when compairing it to Nvidia's driver utility, simply because the CCC provides a larger variety of options.

Cons: None that I can think of, ignoring the fact it's an AGP video card.

Other Thoughts: I've only used this on Windows XP. I have no clue how it fairs using Windows Vista or Windows 7 at that matter.

Pros: Despite being a 3000 series card when there are 4000 series AGP radeons available, this is the fastest one according to many benchmarking sites. I needed the upgrade to be able to play COD: Modern Warfare 2, my old X800 did not have shader 3.0, which is required.

Athlon 64 3500+
2 gigs of ram
Enermax 420w power supply

This card got me to playing with smooth frame-rates at 1024 x 768 and low detail settings. Absolutely awesome for such an old system.

Cons: You MUST plug in BOTH molex power connectors on the provided adapter to make this card work. I only had one plugged in on my first power up and the system only booted one time in 5 attempts. There are no instructions telling you to do so, and many people have had this issue not knowing it was a simple error.

Other Thoughts: Plug 2 molex connectors into the adapter, plug the adapter into the card, and install the latest drivers for it. Catalyst 10.1 has worked flawlessly for me thus far. Update your sound drivers if your system freezes in game. My cheap sound blaster Live was to blame. Updated the drivers and all problems vanished.

Pros: NONE

Cons: PUT THE CARD IN MY COMPUTER TURNED ON MY MONITOR THEN THE COMPUTER THE MONITOR NEVER CAME ON AND THE COMPUTER JUST BEEPED OVER AND OVER.

Pros: It was a great upgrade, performs exactly as a pcie hd3850, runs cool (when you tweak the fan) without being loud and handles overclocking better than most hd3850. ATI agp hotfix drivers work flawlessly. When It works its wonderful but...

Cons: ...its often not working. I have this card in a dual socket 940 motherboard with an agp pro slot. Since I first got it for some unknown illogical reason this card only likes cold boots. When it starts up it will work indefinitely, but help me should i need to restart for whatever reason. That means this computer will not be among the living for atleast 15 minutes. This is my third card and they all behaved the same.

Its a particularity of this Sapphire card as Powercolor and Visionteks HD3850 agp and 6800GT 7800GS agps do not share this problem! If that were not the case I would blame the agp pro slot or the PSU (which is a flawlessly working 850w Silverstone)

Other Thoughts: If your going to buy it, make sure your motherboard has no problems with this card. Glad this system is not my main computer.

Pros: Excellent upgrade for aging 8x motherboards.Went from a 9700 PRO to this board a little less than 2 years ago. Playing my all games with much better quality and settings on @# inch monitor. At today's Newegg price, it's an even better bang for buck upgrade.

Cons: Not really a con, the board died within 4 months of the end of warrenty. Sapphire requires reseller to do the warrenty on this product, which I believe is really a plus.

Other Thoughts: Unfortunantly, whilw rebooting my machine for a driver, it never booted again.Now I have a brand new GPU anf no MB to use it on. This MB was to be relegated to my home entertainment system too. Thinking about seeing what, if possablle, Asus would charge to repair one of the 2 478pin boards I have to fill thid roll or what route I need to take to get my HTPC without buying everything new for it.