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

Reviewed By: Commissar Alan on 2/4/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: more than 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

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.

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Fastest AGP Card available!

Reviewed By: Mr. Studly on 2/3/2010

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

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.

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WORST CARD EVER

Reviewed By: on 2/2/2010

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: less than 1 day

This user purchased this item from Newegg

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.

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