Customer Reviews Of POWERCOLOR AG3850 512MD3 Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready Video Card

Customer Reviews

Powercolor
AG3850 512MD3
Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Customer Reviews for POWERCOLOR AG3850 512MD3 Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready Video Card - Retail
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Review Summary (45 Reviews):
Excellent	18ReviewsExcellent	39%
Good	8ReviewsGood	18%
Average	7ReviewsAverage	16%
Poor	0Reviews	0%
Very Poor	12ReviewsVery Poor	27%
Excellent	0Reviews	0%
Good	0Reviews	0%
Average	0Reviews	0%
Poor	0Reviews	0%
Very Poor	0Reviews	0%
Excellent	3ReviewsExcellent	42%
Good	0Reviews	0%
Average	2ReviewsAverage	29%
Poor	0Reviews	0%
Very Poor	2ReviewsVery Poor	29%

Reviewer	Product Review
Easy Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	10/29/2009 12:54:13 PM Amazing, now I know what needs to be done Pros: Excellent performer - the best AGP card since the 6800 GT chipset in my experience. Everything looks amazing, and the card is a rocket. Great price too! Cons: Catalyst tends to load rather slowly. I had no other issues than the installation issues that I was initially having. Not a problem anymore now that I have the understanding of what it takes to make this card work! Other Thoughts: Prepare ahead of time for what is required. You will need to get the appropriate driver from the AMD website for this to work correctly (yes there are fixes), and just make sure that your memory path/aperture is set correctly to 256 bit in BIOS or performance will suffer. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Easy Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	10/9/2009 8:06:40 AM Still On The Fence Pros: Great performance specs, decent cost (as always from Newegg). Cons: Even after 30 years in high tech - this one requires a lot of intense thought - much confusion on which version of the driver is most appropriate. Still not 100%, as it seems to have questionable performance so far (not tweaked to its best). Other Thoughts: The 6800GT that it replaced seems to have had better performance with some applications and games Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: average Ownership: 1 month to 1 year	9/25/2009 5:36:20 PM BEWARE Pros: Fancy looking Cons: so far I have had 2 of these cards diagnosed as DEFECTIVE Other Thoughts: Avoid POWERCOLOR at any price. The few people who get these cards to work have had to do a tremendous amount of unnecessary work adapting BIOS or OS. Customer support is slow if at all, providing no concise answers. They charge customer for RMA. Expect 6-8 week turnaround for RMA. I have yet to receive one of these cards that work. 3.06 P4HT 1066/1024 Silencer 610W Absolutely Unacceptable. Never again. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Ed Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	9/22/2009 5:45:15 PM Many problems Pros: If you get it working, it's a decent card. Cons: Like many other people, I had problems with this card. Windows freezes shortly after loading the driver. I was able to at least fix that by disabling AGP fast writes. I was unable to get the card to work in Linux; it immediately freezes the system whenever the driver loads. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	9/17/2009 9:26:07 AM Fastest AGP card ever made Pros: Exstends your agp systems life and with it you can play just about any game out at very high quality. Cons: none Other Thoughts: Make sure you use the agp 3000 series patch drivers directly from ATI's web site . This will help you avoid any and all driver issues. 1 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Instag8or Tech Level: high Ownership: more than 1 year	9/8/2009 1:41:28 AM Graphics Turbo for AGP!!! Pros: Excellent frame rates in newer games like Crysis, L4D, COD W@W, and GRID. 2-D gaming performance is top notch. Nice Custom Cooler. Runs cool. Definite improvement in gaming over a Geforce 7800gs. Cons: FINDING the drivers can be a pain. I have always gotten the latest hotfix drivers from ATI/AMD and have had no problems installing/using them. Had to upgrade my PSU to use the card. CCC. Screen flashes when windows first starts up (just annoying really, but I have to wait for it to flash before I do anything or it resets to the desktop like I haven't done anything yet). Other Thoughts: This was the best AGP card out when I bought it. I think that the AGP bus has a hard time feeding enough information to this card. I do believe that a 3650 would perform very similarly to this on an AGP bus. My system: P4 @ 3.2Ghz, 2GB DDR400 RAM, Radeon 3850, 160GB HDD @ 7200rpm, XP Pro. 0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
John Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week	9/7/2009 12:07:12 PM Problems right out of the box Pros: Potential lifeline to an old 939 system Attractive reported specs & benchmarks Cons: Omega and new ATI drivers don't work with this card. Card overheats within 1 minute of 3D game or benchmark. "Starting May 1, 2009, RMA processing fee of $12 applies after 90 days of purchase." Other Thoughts: I bought this card on impulse at a local shop. It was a "last one" item. Published specs and benchmarks are very attractive as a lifeline for an old 939 system. My system had previously been running flawlessly with an X850 XT card. 3DMark05 Graphics score = 4600. Replaced that with this 3850. The latest ATI Radeon driver reported "no compatible device" error. The most recent Omega driver 4.8.442 did not report error, but upon reboot, no driver was installed. The ATI 8.5 driver included in the PowerColor driver CD did work. Less than 1 minute into 3DMark05 graphics module, buzzer beeps due to overheating. Same thing on two subsequent attempts. Fan on the card seems to be running fine. Benchmark was able to finish, giving score of 6600. Using the ATI control panel, selecting "auto tune" or any attempt to up the processor or memory speed results in overheating and buzzer beeps. The reported processor speed, 300MHZ, is likely wrong, because of the 3DMark 05 score. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
DropZone Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year	7/18/2009 12:11:41 PM It's finally working!!!! Pros: This is an amazingly fast AGP card! It even supports old 4x AGP slots. This card can definitely add new life to an old PC as long as your CPU, RAM, and PSU are up to the task. Even though my PC is now severely CPU bound and also bottlenecked by it's 4X AGP slot this card was still a good upgrade (for me). I can now smoothly play Oblivion and other old games using Ultra High settings at 1600x1200. Specs: 2.4ghz P4 Northwood, 533fsb, Abit TH7ii-Raid MB, 1 Gig RDRAM, 450W PSU, and running WinXP SP3. (Note: I plan to put this card into something faster down the road.) Cons: It took tons of tinkering, installing, and reinstalling to get this card running right. I almost threw it away! In my opinion, these newer AGP ATI cards are just plain picky with older hardware. Other Thoughts: I tried drivers 7.11 to 9.6. Most gave me working 3D acceleration, but broken or laggy 2D. Some would cause 100% CPU usage spikes every few seconds. The best I found was Hotfix Driver 9.2 which gave me good 3D, but I still couldn't drag an icon on my desktop without a five second delay! Fed up, I pulled the card and bought an ATI X1650 Pro card from Powercolor's main competitor. Guess what? Same exact problems! I would say it was my MB except I tested several older ATI and Nvidia cards and they all work fine. In the end (by dumb luck) I got the card working by changing my “AGPCLK/CPUCLK” ratio in BIOS from "fixed" (which locked my AGP clock at 66MHz) to "2/4 ratio" (which also ran the AGP clock at 66MHz). I know! This makes no sense!!! But, now both new ATI cards work flawlessly. I can repeat the results all day long. So, if you're having problems try different (yet basically appropriate) AGP clock speeds. Maybe, alter your CPU and FSB speed a bit. Good luck! 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Noobtastic Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month	7/8/2009 10:20:30 AM Great video card, as long as you know what it needs Pros: Insanely fast for an AGP card (and don't leave comments about how much faster PCI-E cards are for a fraction of the cost!!!) Finally a card where chances are your aging 939 CPU is holding back your video card, rather than vice versa:). Allows older PC's to keep up with the recent onslaught of shader 3 and 4 required games. Far Cry 2 looks sick on this card!!!!! Cons: It does not allow me to use the RAID function on my motherboard anymore, for some reason or another. You need to make sure that you go online to some forums before you buy this and check that your chipset does not have known issues with this card. I found out after the fact that my VIA K8T800 chipset has some problems with Powercolor's version of the HD3850. Can be pretty simple fixes, but just check it out so you know what you could possibly be dealing with. Other Thoughts: Overall I recommend this card if you are like me and don't have $750-$1000 to at least build a respectable gaming machine, but know that you have some wiggle room to upgrade what you have. I am now able to play Far Cry 2 at medium settings with some very good FPS, and it is very playable at high settings. All I need now is a good CPU fan so I can overclock my x2 3800+, and gain even more months out of my system:) 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	7/1/2009 8:27:33 PM Waste of $$ Pros: When it wasn't locking up my PC it worked great. Cons: Constant lockups on my PC. I tried everything from various different drivers (agp hotfix included) to updating my BIOS. No luck! My PC would just randomly freeze up on me, sometimes it would be within 5 minutes after booting up, sometimes an hour or 2. I had plenty of juice running to the card, and plenty of airflow as well. So it wasn't a matter of underpowered/overheating. I contacted PowerCooler for assistance twice. The 1st time I was told someone from Tech support would call me back as they were at lunch. And after 2 days of not hearing back, I called again. And it was a total waste of time, as the rep I spoke with had no clue at all on how to help. Card has been RMA'd, and I picked up the Sapphire version, which works flawlessly!! Other Thoughts: I know AGP is a dying breed, but I can't afford to upgrade my whole system at this time. So if you got AGP, and want to squeeze the most out of your system.....STAY AWAY from the PowerCooler card!!! Do yourself a favor and get the Sapphire instead. Manufacturer Response:It's quite possible that the card you received could have been bad. AGP cards do typically run into more compatibility problems than PCI-E cards, but BIOS tweaks and updates that usually rectify those types of issues. If a replacement card fixed your problem then I'd say it might be safe to assume that your first card was most likely defective. Either way, if you require further assistance, feel free to contact me at usa@powercolor.com and I'd be happy to help you. -Hugo Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year	6/28/2009 4:51:11 PM =( Pros: Card works great when you're not playing online games and getting blue screen. Cons: I've tried all the hotfix drivers from 8.12 up to 9.6. I can get the card stable with movies and anything I through at it....But as soon as I load into a online game (everquest, warhammer etc) I get the blue screen 0x0000008E as soon as it finishes loading. I've tried a new psu, checked my ram, uninstalled directx / netframework 2.0 and even took the side off my pc and put up a big box fan to ensure it wasn't overheating. I'm at a loss for words here and it's too late to rma it, Ive had it for like 3 months. I thought it was my 350w psu so I got a 550W one. I was wrong =(. Other Thoughts: Just not sure on this card, Think I'll cut my $100+ dollar loss and switch back to nvidia. Manufacturer Response:The card carries a 2 year warranty so we can definitely help you get a replacement if that's what it takes to resolve this issue. I'll be more than happy to help you with this, so please e-mail me at usa@powercolor.com, and be sure to reference this review. Thanks. -Hugo Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Stan Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	6/26/2009 7:55:21 PM UPDATED REVIEW 180; now positive Pros: Great Specs (still uses AGP) provides new life to old systems...once you clean out ALL your old drivers and traces of all associated programs and files related to previous video card installs. Cons: You must use a "driver cleaner" (which I resorted to paying for as a last resort) to completely uninstall all traces of all drivers from ATI & Nvidia programs. If you don't the 9.6 Hotfix driver installation will be corrupt and it will fail as described in my previous post. Other Thoughts: My Bad: never try to install hardware late at night :) This card is now performing as expected in 2D with no conflicts. I am about to test gaming performance, but I imagine it will work way better - now that it is properly installed. Yes, I needed to comb Google for answers, but make sure your old drivers (and all traces) are totally GONE or you will have conflicts with any Catalyst ATI Driver. Definitely need to use the 9.6 Hotfix Driver from ATI; don't bother with the driver on the installation CD; it's too old. The ATI driver installation SHOULD automatically clean up all their old stuff (like the driver cleaner I bought online takes care off), but it provides a good niche market for a developer, I guess... Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Stan Tech Level: high Ownership: less than 1 day This user purchased this item from Newegg	6/26/2009 9:11:02 AM BAD Drivers fro HD3850 Pros: AGP Card with cool specs; hoping to bring new life to an old AGP machine, but falls WAY SHORT Cons: NO WORKING ATI DRIVERS. I bought the POWERCOLOR AG3850 Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X HDCP from newegg.com. I have a P4 3.0 Intel Chip, ASUS P4C800 Deluxe MB & 2 GB or RAM, I also have an ANTEC 480W PSU I installed this card with the default drivers that came on the shipped CD; the card physically runs fine. Then I upgraded the drivers to the 9.6 Hotfix Catalyst drivers. Both drivers failed. In 2D the moving of windows redraw very slowly and scrolling on web pages are choppy and very slow...the only way I can get these symptoms to go away is to reduce the windows "graphics Acceleration" slider in the advanced graphics setting setup to "none'; but this negates why I bought the card in the first place (to play games AND use it with IE and Office 2007). I did not even waste the time to test a game out...I spend 5 hours tying to get any drivers to work (including older Catalyst Drivers). Yes, I uninstalled all previous drivers before re-installing new ones. Other Thoughts: Why can't people @ ATI or PowerColor test these drivers before they sell these things?! I have an old machine, but common, techs got to know the specs of an average AGP machine with stable XP when they make an AGP card and throw drivers together for it...ya think? Manufacturer Response:It's quite possible that there's a compatibility issue somewhere. AGP cards do experience these type of problems more than PCI-E ones do, but we should be able to resolve this with some configuration. Your P4C800 motherboard is based off of the Intel i875 chipset, which should not have a problem with this card at all. I'd love to help you get this resolved, so please e-mail me at usa@powercolor.com and I'll see what I can do. Please be sure to reference this review in your e-mail. Thanks. -Hugo Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
gris1969 Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year	6/23/2009 5:24:27 PM Still Junk Pros: None. Doesn't work and I get ignored by the RMA center. Cons: The card made a nice popping noise when I installed it and the ever pleasant smell of burning electronics. This was the third card I have tried. I tried to get an RMA to return it again and I get ignored. I got a reply to my review earlier but none to my RMA...No warm and fuzzy feeling here. Other Thoughts: I have had many video card in this computer...I change them out every year. This is the worst one so far. Manufacturer Response:Please give us a call at our offices M-F 9am-6pm PST and we will be happy to process the RMA for the product. PowerColor Service Team 909.468.5100 Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
chris Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	6/16/2009 6:20:42 PM TAINTED!!!! Pros: Great specs out of the box< looked awesome> Cons: Drivers are tainted I have an older amd system 64 1.8 processor 2 gigs of ram and a k8 series mother board all rock solid with a new 80 cert 550 watt power supply. This system is so stable Ive never exerienced any crashes with it at all. As soon as the drivers went in the system went kaput tried for about 2 days to figure it out and gave up also I think card died in process. Also I did try the hot fix driver as well to no avail. Other Thoughts: I think they really tried to reach too far on this one the specs are comparible to my twin 9600 allpha dogs from xfx on another rig. My only guess is the card is just way to hot for an aging agp board or the drivers are complete garbage. Also Im a 15 plus year pc gamer and have seen this on ati chipsets before. i said never again to ati a long time ago been nvidia ever since and the stats on this card just seemed too good to be true so I thought id give them another whirl........never again lol Manufacturer Response:It's completely possible that you may have received a defective card, these things happen. I'd like to try and help you get this resolved. Feel free to contact me directly. My e-mail is usa@powercolor.com, and please reference this review. Thank you. -Hugo Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Cain Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week	6/12/2009 7:45:03 PM Pros: Nice upgrade from my 6800GT. Much quieter too. Purchased open box item and it came with original packaging still in perfect condition with all accessories, discs, and documentation. Cons: None so far. Other Thoughts: Installed on an Asus A8V motherboard with a VIA K8T800 Pro chipset. Everything works great! Tested on XP, Vista x86, and Windows 7 x64 RC. Get the Catalyst 9.5 with AGP hotfix for XP and Vista. No drivers on AMD's site for Windows 7 yet but drivers are provided through windows update, though sans CCC. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Energyo Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week	6/12/2009 7:15:54 PM Junk Pros: It fit in the AGP slot correctly? Cons: This card is junk. This is the 2nd powercolor card in a row that does not work one bit. Same exact problem. PowerColor customer service said the first one was bad. Now I have another card from them SAME exact thing. It says a lot about this company. Very very dissapointing. Do NOT buy from this company. It is a rip off. I repeat do NOT buy from this company go with another one. Trust me. Spend the extra few dollars if you are on a budget because in the long run you end up paying more. Other Thoughts: With all of the RMAs and waiting for shipping and stuff. It has been over a month without a video card. Thanks a lot powercolor. I will never buy a product from PowerColor again. Manufacturer Response:Hi, We're sorry you had a difficult time with this card, but we'd like to know what the problem was exactly that you had. Please give us a call at 909.468.5100. PowerColor Service Team Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Raiden Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week	6/9/2009 9:42:50 AM Very Nice Pros: The power. The GPU has some serious power behind it and will easily breathe new life into any decent aging AGP motherboard. The card itself has one massive fan on it so it's guaranteed to say frozen (metaphorically) if you give it the space to breathe. It runs great on most games I play, though it'd run better if I could fix an issue I mention in the cons. Cons: For now it's a con, but ATi's Catalyst Control Center is telling me the card's core clock is running at 300MHz. That's half of what the card's spec sheets tell me (666 MHz). Also, I'm not sure if it's just ATi, but it won't allow me to do a dual screen with a DVI-Out to a 4:3 monitor and the Video Out to an HDTV. Other Thoughts: Watch what power supply you get. The notice on the box recommends a 450W, and in comparison to my old 7600GT, this thing is obscenely large. It's more than half the length of my case. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
jigc23 Tech Level: average Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	5/27/2009 10:58:13 AM Great VC Pros: Great graphics support for my P4 and low temperatures ranging from 50 to 60c's no need for me to tweak the clocks. HD videos play great with this card. Cons: Driver installation can become pretty frustrating trying to get the right driver. I don't know if every driver version is different for different systems but after trying about 10 different ones I ended up with catalyst 9.4 with hotfix Other Thoughts: What did it for me finally was to install the card by itself and a fresh new install of the OS with the video card driver been the first one to install. No problems from there. I noticed the pc froze with the monitor auto shutdown feature on but was resolved when I turned off. Don't know if it was because the video card or the wrong type of dvi cable I also installed. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Dave Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	5/27/2009 10:29:09 AM Trash Pros: If you can get it to work it looks like it would be good. Cons: I've spent the last 24hours trying to fix the blue screen of death when playing some games i've done everything from the hotfix to reformating and still get it. If it wans't for this problem. I would have gave it 5 eggs but seeing how I can't play anything this was just a big waste of money and time. Save your money and get a better computer before you think of buying this product. Save yourself from headaches of work for nothing. Other Thoughts: It would be nice to get a refund. Crosses fingers. Manufacturer Response:Feel free to contact me directly, I'd like to try and help you get this issue resolved. Ideally, I'd like to find out more about your hardware configuration. Reference this review in your e-mail if you could please. usa@powercolor.com -Hugo Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Kurt Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year This user purchased this item from Newegg	5/24/2009 1:19:16 AM More Food For Thought Pros: Just wanted to follow up on what I wrote a few posts ago about forcing my power supply to do hard time in it's twilight years. Turns out, when you overstress your (already old) power supply, it dies a lot faster. after a couple of weeks, I noticed a lot of the same problems other people have been posting, and let me say... "It's Not The Card!" The power supply was dying a slow death because of the increased demand. I just replaced my 250W Dell original with a Thermaltake 430W with amazing results. Everything I loved about the card came back. Crashes stopped and the system is solid as a rock. Please clowns... meet the minimum manufacturer requirements before subtract eggs. If performance decreases, fix some of the shortfalls in your system. Don't just blaim the card. Cons: Please see my previous post. No cons worth mentioning Other Thoughts: You may get away with a below-recommendation power supply for a while, but it will die. Just replace it. I got a 430W for less than 40 bucks delivered. I got lucky and my power supply died quietly. I have heard it can be bad if the power supply crashes hard. Buy this AGP card. It makes your system rock again! Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
acepilot Tech Level: average Ownership: 1 day to 1 week	5/22/2009 4:38:58 AM pleasantly surprised Pros: easy installation; plenty of room in mid tower case. would have given 5 eggs but hav'nt had time to put card through all it's options yet. looks promising though. Cons: poor instructions with card. 9.5 xp driver does not work. initial problem with fastfix. Other Thoughts: after I ordered this card and started reading some of the reviews and web sights concerning problems with this card, I thought about refusing delivery and going with a pci-e mother board and video card. However, I took a chance and installed this card. I removed my nvidea drivers using the add/delete xp utility. Going on the ATI web site I down loaded the latest driver (9.5)for this card and attempted to install the driver. I then received the message many other people reported "found no supported hardware". thought I had made a big mistake ordering this card. I then down loaded the 9.4 'hotfix' driver many others had strongly suggested. ran this driver, rebooted and received message "xp has stopped execution of this program to prevent damage to your system". after uttering many unprintable explecitives, I rebooted system and much to my surprise, desk top loaded normally.ran flight simulator x at 1280 x 768 resulution and options maxed out, and was amazed. excellent!! Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Wolvinator Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	5/20/2009 7:34:35 AM Works great on my single core Intel system. Pros: Now I am able to max out my graphics settings while playing COD 4. Works great with the ATI Catalyst 9.4 Hotfix driver. Just as people have said, it breathes new life into an old machine. Cons: Hard to find the 9.4 Catalyst "Hotfix" driver on the ATI website. You have to type "Catalyst 9.4 Hotfix" in the search bar to ever find a link to the driver. You cannot find it thru the regular driver section. Powercolor site has outdated drivers. Other Thoughts: My machine is an: Intel P4 3.2 Ghtz 600W power supply 2 GB DDR400 ram D865Perl motherboard. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Xander Tech Level: average Ownership: 1 month to 1 year This user purchased this item from Newegg	5/15/2009 12:56:40 PM Don't know what's going on Pros: The vid card is awesome. I play EVE online mostly with my machine. I can max out the graphics and still be running about 100 avg/FPS. Nice Control features and seems to still have potential that's untapped. Cons: About 3 weeks ago my card started to make the textures be stretched out and have the graphics REALLY glitchy. I went and found the lastest patch for it (at which found out that the 2000 and 3000 series requires a Hotfix patch) and now I have a FPS cap of 60, and it didn't fix my graphics problem. I went off and tried it on some other offline games (Elder Scrolls III, Nexus:Jupiter Incident, and Warhammer: Dawn of War) and the problem is there too. Other Thoughts: On Nexus I have the option to use DX8 so I did that and it works but it doesn't have the quality. I'm working with a: POWERCOLOR AG3850 512MD3 Radeon HD 3850 PQI TURBO 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB LGA 775 ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 LGA 775 Antec NeoPower 650 Antec Three Hundred 80GB Western Digital 230GB SeaGate Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	5/8/2009 10:46:00 AM Last good AGP card Pros: Probably the fastest AGP card you gonna find at this point. It replaced my x1300pro and it made a huge difference. Gameplay is much smoother and i can bump up all the graphical settings to medium/high on most games now @ 1024 x 768. Fan is fairly quiet at idle. Cons: As everyone should know by now, you need to get the AGP hotfix drivers to make this card work. I had issues at first because i already had the hotfix drivers installed for my x1300pro. I figured i could even swap the cards and it would work fine. It didn't and i had horrible studdering in all games. I uninstalled the drivers and then re-installed the same ones and the problem disappeared. Not really a propblem with the card, it's ATIs drivers. Other Thoughts: This is the final upgrade to this system, and i will be buying a new computer in october. If you plan on sticking with your AGP setup for a little while longer i guess this is a good upgrade, though the money could be saved for a new mobo. Also, this card is huge! it completely spans my midtower case, from the back wall all the way to the hard drives. 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
groucho Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year This user purchased this item from Newegg	4/25/2009 12:43:43 PM Don't waste your money. Time to upgrade if you need an AGP card. Pros: None that I could find and their support is lacking. Cons: Fact from my experience: THERE ARE NO MORE GOOD AGP VIDEO CARDS...period. This was a waste of time. Sorry everyone who's trying to keep a socket 478 machine with an 8X AGP slot running as long as possible. IF you lost/fried your NICE ATI X850XT Platinum (like I did) or nVidia equivilent...it's time to gut your machine & upgrade. Other Thoughts: Save your money and your 1/2 way there to an Intel i7 920 quad core CPU. This card was VERY disappointing and I hope I can get more than $25 for it on oBey. (ONLY experienced SELLERS on that awful place would understand ) 0 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Marvose Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month	4/20/2009 1:18:10 PM Dead in 2 weeks Pros: I reviewed this card earlier and gave it five eggs. It deserved them until the moment it died. Cons: After a couple weeks, it started giving me a black screen and freezing my whole system after 5-15 minutes of 3D gaming. I think it might have been overheating: it seemed like the fan stopped kicking into high gear (I stopped hearing the whoosh). Sadly, there's no way to control the fan speed on this thing, so I was thoroughly effed. Even worse, I bought it as an open box deal. So now to get a refund, I have to pay for shipping back, plus newegg's restocking fee, all of which adds up to about 20 bucks. 20 bucks for two weeks of 3D gaming. Sigh. Other Thoughts: Defective merchandise happens, which is why I'm not knocking my review down to one egg. I knew I was taking a risk on an open box. 1 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Madux2 Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month	4/13/2009 4:57:50 PM @ Volvox Pros: Fast, very fast. My amd single core 4000+ running at 2.4mhz is only using about 10% of the cards potential. Card does run much faster thanevga 6800. Cons: No fan speed controller, runs 100% all the time and is the loudest item in my computer. There is no way to change fan speed aside from running the fan to some sort of manual controller as this card does not have the hardware to change the fan speed from 100% Other Thoughts: @ Volvox, agp aperture size has nothing to do with the cards internal memory. AGP Aperture size allocates a certain amount of ram for texture information that goes beyond the cards 512mb limit. The recomended setting for AGP Aperture size is 128mb. Adding more or less does not bring any speed increases. So stick to 128mb, its a commonly used value and has worked flawlessly for me. 2 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Andy Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year	4/10/2009 10:16:42 AM Pros: VERY powerful card. Can handle just about any game out there. Combined with a dual core processor you'd never know I had an AGP rig. I've maxed out Dead Space, ANY Source game, Bioshock, and can run Crysis on high between 20-40fps. This is the end for AGP, but if you still want to get that aging computer back up to current gaming standards, this is your only bet. Specs: HD3850, 4400+X2 processor, 2GB RAM, 450w power supply. Cons: None Other Thoughts: You're going to want a high-end processor to make the best of this card. It's a great card but your processor could bottleneck it. Also it really is a big card. I had to play around with it a bit to get it to fit in, and it was a tight fit. Should fit almost any case with a little effort though. 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Volvox Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	4/8/2009 8:05:33 AM Compatibility Issues Pros: Product shipped out fairly promptly through ups. Seems like a good quality board. Fan kept the board cool. Fit barely into my mid sized 12" x 9.6" sized allowance mb. Cons: Fan isn't compatible with most AGP motherboard configurations, the fan is large and takes up one of my PCI slots. After updating my bios to latest rev. I realized that my mb only supported a 256mb aperture sized agp graphics card. Not the card's fault. I got the card to run under graphics and recognized by ati's ccc driver after installing the agp hotfix. Had to upgrade from windows 2000 to Vista business since ati doesn't support windows 2000. Not a problem for me, but for others it might be. Once I got the card running it was recognized in windows as a 512 mb graphics card, but I knew it was set at 256mb so when I tried to run a program in 3D graphics it would become unstable and crash unless I set the program to run at 256mb of graphic mem, but that only delayed the crashing. Sad to say will have to RMA this card. Other Thoughts: I am still giving PowerColor another chance by down grading my graphic choice to a POWERCOLOR X1650PRO 256/64 AGP Radeon X1650PRO 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card Hopefully it will do the trick. Motherboard K7S41GX ASrock, most reliable mb, just outdated AMD Duron Socket-A upgrading from a 4 year old burnt out ASUS 128MB AGP graphics card. 1 year past it's warrenty. 1GB ram Plan to get a new build and use this one as a server. 2 out of 6 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Kurt Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: less than 1 day This user purchased this item from Newegg	4/6/2009 7:37:29 AM A Must Have AGP Upgrade Pros: Replaced NVidia GeForce4 card that came stock with my Dell Dimension 8250. This card slotted right into the AGP slot with no trouble... 1 for 1 replacement. There was an extra Power plug right nearby that I hijacked to give it juice. I followed the directions from the other posters and had no trouble at all. 1. Uninstall all video drivers with Control Panel > add/remove 2. Restart in Safe Mode (hold down F8 at reboot) 3. Set all display parameters to minimums 4. Use Driver Sweeper (free) or similar to remove ALL display drivers (Nvidia and ATI) 5. Take out the old card and put in the new one. 6. Start up (display will look like garbage... no prob). Go to ATI website and get the drivers and software suite for the Radeon HD 3850. Be sure to get the one labeled "hotfix" (Very important). 7. Run the hotfix (display will flash black a few times and then stabilize). Run the setup wizard and reset the resolutions to maximum... Prepare to be amazed! Cons: Very Minor: Card is wide and covers one of my PCI slots. No big deal for me... I have a bunch. Very Very Minor: Not so much a con, as a fact of life... This new card has a fan that adds to the sound level of the previously quiet Dell. Also, it loads down the PSU much more so the power supply fan runs faster which contributes even more to the sound. This gets more pronounced at high 3D demand... obviously. Hey, just throwing it out there for full disclosure. I really dont mind the sound at all. Other Thoughts: Please don't be discouraged by the people who can't figure this out. It really is easy to do. As alway, Newegg came through 100%. More food for thought... ATI recommends a minimum power supply of 350W. I noticed other posters replaced their power supply with this card. I decided to take a chance an not replace my original stock 250W Dell power supply (what can I say? I'm cheap and determined to squeeze a couple more years out of this old P4 dog). After installing and running the setup I ran FurMark to stress the card (and power supply). I got up to 102fps, averaged 66fps, msaa=0, at 1024x768. GPU temperature peaked at 222F, 105C and stabilized around 220F, 104C. My fans were howling, but everything settled out and the screen didn't so much as flicker. Moral of the story... If you're cheap like me, you may be able to force your old power supply to do hard labor in it's twilight years. Good luck. 2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
AS Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week	4/5/2009 11:38:51 PM groovy Pros: Plays everything smoothly on reasonably high settings. GRID, Dirt, all NFS games, Crysis, Farcry2 etc Must download drivers from ati and also install agp hotfix ! Works great with Asus P4PE and Pentium4 @ 3.6Ghz (SL6PG) and 500W PS Cons: pretty long card, same length as the motherboard once in the slot. had to rearrange the harddrives to fit it in the case, no big deal though. Other Thoughts: never get a video card with anything less than ddr3 memory if you want to play games. ddr3 memory is worth every penny 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
SA_Fini Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	4/3/2009 7:04:31 AM The Real Deal Pros: I started with a 6600GT with 128 MB of RAM and ordered this card for Fallout 3 and HD playback. This card did not disappoint! I didn't record framerates because AGP gaming is an exercise in futility, but I went from low settings @ 800 X 600 in Fallout 3 to medium settings @ 1280 X 1024 and my BSODs disappeared. MY rig's bottleneck is now the processor, a Barton XP 2500 and 2.5 Gigs of RAM. I know this card is overkill for my system, but the rebate lowered the price to the 2600XT range. The fan is quiet and keeps the card very cool, the card's temp didn't move after 90 minutes of gaming. Cons: The only issue I had was minor, there was no driver CD in the box. I had already downloaded the latest patched drivers from ATI so I didn't care, but others might. Other Thoughts: My install was literally plug and play. I am very satisfied with this purchase. My power supply is an Antec Earthwatts 650 with a dedicated 12v rail for the video card so I had no issues, I didn't try the molex to 6 pin connector so I can't say whether the card works well with it. 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Wildman Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	4/2/2009 6:44:41 AM Pros: as always shipped on time. installed card with no problems downloaded driver hotfix card is like night and day from my 128 6600gt geforce card works great and plays warcraft flawless. its like having a new computer Cons: just having to go to site to download hotfix...no brainer really Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
gris1969 Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year	3/30/2009 7:03:04 PM Junk Pros: Not a one...Worthless. Needs a 0 egg for this one Cons: Set it back 3 times to powercolor. Called there tech support and got "it is not compatible with your system". I went on Forums and tried just about anything I could. Upping the voltage to 1.6 moving the memory and adjusting all of the Bios settings and I could never get the cards to boot in any mode. The latest one made a popping noise with the nice smell. The AGP slot show no sign of damage but the board was really hot. I'm back to my Sapphire HD2600XT that runs with no problem. Other Thoughts: I have plenty of power for this system 650W and I'm running a FX-57 with 3 GB of corsair XMS memory with an ASUS A8V-Deluxe board and lots of cooling in an Antec 1200 case. Manufacturer Response:We're sorry to hear you had problems with this card. We would be happy to supply you with a new card under warranty. PowerColor Service Team 0 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Madux Tech Level: high Ownership: less than 1 day	3/30/2009 4:47:24 PM Works Like a Charm! Pros: Went in without an issue. DL'd the drivers from ATI Support under "support & drivers, click on Catalyst software for gamers, DL the Catalyst AGP Hotfix, installed just the drivers at first. I am getting 25 fps in Dal up from 12! Makes the ol 6800 look like the old hardware it is :) Cons: All the reviews and articles I read about this card had me believing I would be returning it today. They were wrong! Other Thoughts: My setup: Abit AV8 3rd eye (with the Via chipset) AMD 4000+ single core, 600w psu w/ dual 18amp 12v, 2gig Kingston HyperX. Prior to the actual hardware install I disabled fastwrite in BIOS. I Downloaded the ATI Hotfix drivers and Driver Dleaner Pro. Uninstalled all the nvidia software and restarted in safe mode (hold down f8) and ran Driver cleaner targeting the nvidia software. Installed the videocard, hit cancel when windows detected new hardware. Installed the hotfix in Custom mode, installed the drivers only not catalyst control center. Restarted and Played Warcraft! I actually can put shadows on full without my system stalling!! Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
hpip Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year	3/23/2009 1:11:29 PM Photo & Graphic Editing Work Well Pros: Simply THE fastest AGP available. I don't play games but do a lot of photo & graphic editing, multi-media and engineering simulations, and this card works well on these aspects. Now the bottlenecks of processing time are software rather than hardware. For a dinosaur socket 478 motherboard, I didn't ever expect to have achieved that kind of speed. Price is very reasonable too. Cons: I've read so much about the driver installation issues by other customers that I'm convinced this card maybe a problem for some old PCs and some folks who are not technical savvy. So be prepared it just may not work for your particular case. Before buying this card, I've read enough to know that I should not bother with the manufacturer driver and should download the latest hotfix driver from ATI. This strategy worked well for my Win XP SP2 and installation was a breeze. But when I updated to SP3, there was unexpected driver conflicts. It took me a while to figure out I must uninstall the onboard VGA and must download the latest hotfix drivers like version 9.3 to resolve this issue. But I can imagine lots of users not having the patience or the technical knowledge to resolve issues like that. So be warned of the potential troubleshooting efforts ahead. But when you finally got through those problems, you'll be rewarded with the fastest AGP available! Other Thoughts: 1) My recommendation for a safe way of driver installation: i) Before installation, set the Display mode to the lowest, like 800 x 600. ii) Don't bother with manufacturer driver from PowerColor. Just download the latest ATI Hotfix Driver for AGP from here: http://support.amd.com/US/GPUDOWNLOAD/Pages/index.aspx 2) I bought this card as open box item and my experience with open box is mixed. I was told that I may not get all the accessories accompanying the card. So I've been warned and I shouldn't be complaining. But no CD, no manual, no cable, no power adaptor....absolutely no nothing but just the card itself? That's disappointing. Having said that, I got the -p version with the copper heatsink instead of the less efficient black aluninum one. That's beyond my expectation! But overall, taking everything into account, I must say it's a big gamble which doesn't justify the bargain price. I probably won't buy any open box item from NewEgg again. 2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Odium Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	3/20/2009 3:51:23 PM Never again Pros: Card specs are decent for an APG card. Cons: Everything else....never got the card to work with ANY 2D or 3D apps. Continual crashes, BSOD's, and just all around failure. Tried everything from changing graphic settings and FSB to using 3rd party drivers. Nothing worked. Other Thoughts: My opinion, this card is an epic failure for ATI. Purchase at your own risk and be prepared to be disappointed. Manufacturer Response:If you would call our tech support at 909.468.5100 we'd be happy to find a diagnoses and help resolve this issue. 0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
Marvose Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week	3/19/2009 6:45:42 AM Makes Pentium 4 awesome again Pros: Bought this along with the Logisys PS650U12 power supply. So far I've played Spore, Crysis (demo), NWN 2, and Oblivion flawlessly* on high settings with stock clock speed. I doubt there's a game currently on the market (or any that will be released in the near future) that this card would have trouble with, assuming the rest of your components aren't completely terrible (I'm running an old Dell Pentium 4 2.8GHz with 1GB RAM). Highly recommended for an older machine. You won't be disappointed. When I say flawlessly, I don't mean I had constant 60+ FPS. I didn't check. The point is that they were all running smoothly enough that I didn't feel any need to check. Unless you're a total hardcore FPS nut, you won't either. (and if you were, you wouldn't be wasting your time with an AGP graphics card anyway.) Cons:* The fan seems awfully loud under stress. Not really an issue for me, but it might be for you. Quiet when idle. The big fan/cooler blocks a PCI port. Other Thoughts: Purchased as a Newegg "Open Box" deal. Despite dire warnings about Open Box items being completely barebone with no accessories or anything, it came inside the retail box with a DVI-to-VGA adapter, install disc, molex-to-6-pin adapter, and one other adapter I can't remember--in short, everything it comes with new, and they were all still sealed in their little protective baggies. Didn't try the drivers from PowerColor. Used the AGP Hotfix drivers from ATI's support site. They worked fine. I was up and running in less than 20 minutes. 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: average Ownership: 1 week to 1 month This user purchased this item from Newegg	3/2/2009 11:44:09 AM impressive.. Pros: I upgraded from Nvdina 6800 128MB.. I'm impressed and It looked great and HD steam improves. Cons: headache but, just download hotfix... Other Thoughts: OS= WINDOWS XP SP3 MB= FOXCONN 651M02-G-L (no 800Mhz FSB, It's lame) Processor= 2.8 GHZ Intell Pentium 4 RAM= 2GB PC3200 HDD= 160GB + 40GB VC= POWERCOLOR RADEON HD 3850 AGP 512 MB PS= POWPOWER DEMON 480W (plan get hec X-Power 600W with 12v/30amps soon) 0 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
steveni1234 Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	2/27/2009 7:35:34 AM Good Card for an old PC Pros: Easy Installation. Supplied drivers worked out of the box. Nice picture and very good performance. Replaced a 6800 LE - Doubled the frame rate and improved quality from low to medium on Company of Heroes. Heat Sink Temps 35C at idle and 50C playing the game. Cons: DVI-D port did not work with my five year old LCD and DVI cable - Analog port works fine at 1280 x 1024. Card is large. Support from single screw mount and thin PC board barely adequate in an AGP slot. Cooler sticks up above the top of the card. I needed to modify the case to accomodate the extra height. Small fan blades generate high pitched noise - dominates sound over slow moving 120mm case and PS fan. GPU temp reported to be 20C higher than temperature sensor mounted between cooler fins near IC chip. Other Thoughts: 845 chipset with P4 @ 3.3 GHz Getting very near PCIe performance with older hardware. Best option out there for an older "off the shelf" PC with an AGP slot. This card is double the price of the PCIe version. If this is for a home brew PC, you might be able to replace the MB with PCIe and still come in at the same price or better. Cooler is inadequate for overclocking but still fast at default rates. Overclocking doesn't get you much running with an older PC anyway. 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
N/A Tech Level: high Ownership: less than 1 day This user purchased this item from Newegg	2/25/2009 8:22:39 AM Good Card, once you get the drivers installed Pros: 1. Can play World of Warcraft with no problems. I didn't realize what I was missing. 2. Can run the highest resolutions while playing WOW, with no jitters or distortion. Cons: 1. It took me about a day of research to figure out why the provided drivers would not install. ATI has an AGP patch you can download. Go to ATI's website and search "Catalyst AGP Hotfix". 2. Very long card. Make sure your case has a lot of internal space. 3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
doobin1 Tech Level: average Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	2/21/2009 12:57:32 PM Pros: seems like an amazing card and plays all the newer titles without overclocking! Cons: im hoping that i just got a defective one because i could only play those beautiful game for between 2 and 5 minutes before the vpu recovery kicks on and i get a blank screen also i did a benchmark and it said writing was tops but reading was 0 mb so fingers crossed on the new one! Other Thoughts: i hope this card works cuz i love it Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
kkollect Tech Level: high Ownership: 1 day to 1 week This user purchased this item from Newegg	2/21/2009 12:20:55 PM Buy stock in Tylenol Pros: Once I got it working (see below), it's a beautiful card. Made Assassin's Creed look like I was actually there. Benchmarks show a decent setup, however my cpu limits it (see below). The boost my system got from this was definitely an upgrade from my broken xfx GeForce 6200 512mb... Cons: Didn't come with a supply of pain relievers Went through about 4 bottles of Tylenol trying to get this thing to install. No drivers would work, no matter what operating system I was using (XP x86 or either Vista Ultimate x86/x64), and no matter what changes I did to my BIOS (Fast Write changes, Read/Write Changes, 8x/4x... etc., until I found the culprit - AGP 3.0 Calibration Control had to be disabled). Until I changed that BIOS setting, I was getting BSoD's, black screens, white screens, signal loss... You name it, I got it. Would only run in Safe Mode. The headaches are the only reason it only gets 4 eggs. Other Thoughts: I you have issues getting this card to run properly, download the ATI AGP Hotfix Drivers (google it), uninstall, Use Driver Sweeper, check for AGP Calibration Control on your MOBO and disable it if possible, turn off fast writes, reboot, install hotfix drivers (I didnt install CCC as many others have had a problem with it and I didnt even want to be bothered with another headache.) and away you go. Called Powercolor while I was having problems... Actually got an English speaking person. Issues were fixed literally minutes after I got off the phone, so I notified them that Tech Support wasn't needed... I can't comment on support, but I can tell you that it was an amazing help having someone on the other end of the line that I could understand. Gene also displayed some actual concern that I couldn't get my card running. Very helpful and considerate. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!
explosivepets Tech Level: somewhat high Ownership: 1 month to 1 year	2/12/2009 10:08:36 PM Pros: very powerful, no need to overclock. fallout 3 1280x1024, high settings, medium high draw distance 4x aa and 8x ansio filter 35-85 fps. bioshock 1280x1024, lowest it ever drops is 35 fps. mostly synced with 85hz refresh (game is weird without v-sync.) i don't play crysis, so you're on your own there. Cons: that i shelled out 120 for an agp card to end up upgrading my mobo and processor 3 months later (p4 3.0 to pentium e5200 2.5ghz). also catalyst control center. i'm mostly an nvidia fan. why they have to do things backwards on ccc is beyond me. so get omega drivers or use ati tools for everything. seems to make more sense. Other Thoughts: all the benchmarks are with the dual core. fps were pretty good with the p4 but nowhere as great. still a great buy if you don't intend to upgrade mobo and processor just yet. i also noticed that this card has a different item # and it just disappeared from my recently purchased items list. i hope nothing important's changed. Did you find this review helpful? Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!