DIAMOND Viper Radeon HD 3850 DirectX 10.1 3850PE3512O 512MB 256-Bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Pros: factory overclocked, the card seems well build material wise.

Cons: like many people here, the video driver crashed constantly in game. And the card fan is noisy compare to other similar performance card.

Other Thoughts: Did some research and find the the over clock setting with this card is a little off, core is too fast and memory is too slow. After setting to the reference number, all crash go away. 725 -> 720 for the core, 900 -> for the memory. New setting has never crashed my video driver since then.

Pros: Great when it works.

Cons: I have had nothing but trouble with this card. Done everything suggested by "tech support". This card crashes its drivers constantly. Tried in 3 different machines, new drivers, cleaned old drivers, new Power Supply. This card is defective. I am not the only one with these problems. Requested RMA from the manufacturer and waited over a month with no reply. STAY AWAY FROM THIS ONE.

Pros: Price...after $50 rebate (NewEgg ask not to list price so, sorry). Video looked great before it failed. Calling DiamondMM tech support directly was very responsive. (818) 357-5165.

This person was also very helpful:

Melo
Technical Support Supervisor
Best Data Products, Inc
Diamond Multimedia
Tel: 818 534 1414
Email: tech01@diamondmm.com
Email: tech01@bestdata.com

Cons: It did not work properly out of the box. Card restarts often. The card is very long. DiamondMM "online ticket" subission is not responsive. I had to make a long distance call to obtain support.

Other Thoughts: My card was sent back for RMA, but here's what what I recommend doing...
Update your motherboard and video drivers first. Also, obtain current drivers for this card at DIAMONDMM.COM

Follow the incuded instructions or obtain them from DIAMONDMM.COM. Note which driver(s) you installed for future reference or, in case you need to remove or reinstall them. You may aslo want to create restore point before begining all this.
If you still have problems, contact DIAMONDMM support at (818) 357-5165 for troubleshooting, repair, or replacement.

Good luck!

P.S. I'll update this review once I receive my replacement card.

Pros: This card was a good price last year for Black Friday when I bought it. It is a decent card if you're a mid-to-light grade gamer.

Cons: As for me, I have had multiple issues with the drivers and several games. The card is not all that small and I had to move around my drives to make my cables reach. The card has never failed and I have not messed around with any overclocking of it, but the ATI program did give me problems. For about 3-4 months I had to tell it to reset to defaults or I couldn't run anything, not even a Dreamscene!

Other Thoughts: I am running Vista 64-bit with a quad core 2.6 and 4gb of ram.

Pros: Card works well

Cons: Diamond dosent honor their rebates

Other Thoughts: I got this card and 2 of the 4850s from Diamond and have not received my rebate either.
Wont repeat that mistake again

Pros: GREAT GRAPHICS

Cons: GOT RIPPED OFF FOR $65.00, THE AMOUNT THAT DIAMOND OWES ME FOR THE REBATE (IT HAS BEEN OVER 5 MONTHS AND DIAMOND SAYS THEY ARE STILL PROCESSING REBATE) TOTALLY BOGUS!!!!

Other Thoughts: DO NOT EXPECT A REBATE FROM DIAMOND!!!!!!!!

Pros: Started up without a hitch, no performance issues at max settings on games like Dead Space, Bioshock, or other 360 imports. Video playback is pretty darn good, especially in HD or Bluray. Easier fit than most of the larger Nvidia cards. Quiet cooling (compared to the previous Saphire and Powercolor cards I've had).

Cons: I have no idea what the previous reviewers are talking about when they say they can run Crysis in "High" settings (mind you no AA), the card seriously craps out with frame rates at an agonizing 20fps. It crashed several times while playing Stalker and running any kind of DVD in Windows Vista Media Center. I upgraded the drivers and upgraded system memory thinking it was poor overall system performance, still get major freeze ups, Crysis still runs best in "Mainstream" settings, blah.

Other Thoughts: I think this card is a little of the "too good to be true" phenomenon. The specs give it a phenominal rating, and the price point makes you go "wow!", but it just didn't perform as well as I would have hoped. I'm transfering my system to a new case and I don't think this card will make the trip.

IP35 Pro XE MB, 6 GB (4x2 & 2x1) PC8500 DDR2, Intel E8400 3.0Ghz

Pros: It runs (see cons for further explaination).

Cons: Like many who have posted reviews of this card, it will not run at the delivered 725MHz GPU speed. I had to downclock it to 695 MHz. I bought this because it was overclocked and would pretty much equal the performance of a 3870.

Other Thoughts: I am never going to buy an overclocked edition of a video card again. I will also never buy a Diamond video card ever again. I have owned several Diamond video cards (dating back to the 3dfx days) and this is the first to disappoint. I have requested an RMA from Diamond twice, and no response. Their service is non-existent. I couldn't return to newegg because I didn't realize what the issue was until I had already had it for over 30 days (I will buy only products with standard return policy from now on).