Has anyone managed to get an AGP Radeon 3850 working?

[clay12340]

I bought the Powercolor(Who for the record have horrid/non-existent tech support.) version for an older 939 machine I've got and I can't get the card to work for the life of me.

I've read of a lot of people having driver issues with them under Catalyst 8.3. So I've tried every version back to 7.7 as well as the ones on the install disk to no avail. I changed out the power supply for a 750 watt PC Power & Cooling from another machine to see if that was the problem, but it didn't have any effect. I've tried monkeying with every bios setting I can think of. The only thing I've not done that I can think might help is to completely format and try the card under a clean install, but I'd like to avoid that if possible.


Normally I would just wait a few weeks for a new driver, but the errors and crashes I'm getting make me think the actual card may be bad as well and I'd like to RMA it sooner rather than later if I need to.

Here are the machine specs. I didn't see any posts about known hardware incompatibilities involving any of this equipment.
Asus A8V Deluxe(Newest Bios Revision and I reset all of the overclocks to default)
Athlon 4200+ X2
2gigs Kingston HyperX PC3200 RAM
74gb Raptor
Sound Blaster XiFi Xtreme Gamer
Lite On IDE DVD-RW CD-RW combo drive
Ultra X2 550 Watt PSU
Windows XP Professional 32 Bit

So here is what happens. The board POSTs just fine with the card installed. The drivers from Catalyst 8.1 and up seem to install just fine. However, when I restart for the first time it blue screens on a memory error. After restarting it another 1-3 times the machine typically makes it to the windows login screen. From here it hangs about 50% of the time becoming totally unresponsive. The rest of the time it will load the windows desktop normally.

I get lots of blue screens and severe artifacting every time the card attempts to do anything in 3D. This is usually followed by another system freeze. If it doesn't freeze the whole screen artifacts into a big mess of colors and never seems to recover.

If I enter the Catalyst Control Center it shows everything as normal except it will never keep the AGP Read or Write settings enabled when I set them. They test fine when I use the retest button, but after rebooting they are set back to Off.

I also occasionally get other weird errors. I've had the low disk warning pop up a few times and tell me that I've got less than 200mb of hard disk space free with that card installed. When I looked at the properties of the hard drive in my computer it said I had 1.5gb used and 69.2gb free. The actual numbers were something like 50gb used and 20gb free with a functional video card installed.

So does anyone have any ideas on something else I should try or can anyone outline what they have done to get their card to work properly?

Thanks in advance.

 

[dev1se]

Bad card...
Makes you laugh really... ATi has the total monopoly on the modern AGP card market and they still cant do it right

 

[basketcase]

Bad card...
Makes you laugh really... ATi has the total monopoly on the modern AGP card market and they still cant do it right

Well, before we start pointing fingers, ATI doesn't actually produce any AGP cards. They stopped with the x1600, I think. These are 3rd party companies that take ATI's chipsets and do whatever they want with them.

To the OP, this sounds like a bad card. RMA it and get another one.

 

[dev1se]

Oh, it must be nVidia's fault then if its not ATi's.

 

[clay12340]

Thanks for the responses.

As to who is at fault here. No doubt the majority of the fault lies with the 3rd party companies, but I can't help but blame ATI more than a little. If you are going to let someone stamp your logo all over their product you'd be wise to support it as it is your name that gets tarnished.

 

[basketcase]

Oh, it must be nVidia's fault then if its not ATi's.

I didn't say that...

Thanks for the responses.

As to who is at fault here. No doubt the majority of the fault lies with the 3rd party companies, but I can't help but blame ATI more than a little. If you are going to let someone stamp your logo all over their product you'd be wise to support it as it is your name that gets tarnished.

While yes, you would think there would be more emphasis on ATIs part in making sure stuff using their chips worked good. But, it really isn't their intention to ever do anything AGP related anymore. They dropped that awhile ago. These 3rd party companies, like Powercolor and Sapphire are taking chipsets intended for PCI-e, adding a bridge chip and making it run AGP. A lot of times, they even use different ram chips, and depending on the company, they are usually crap compared to what ATI would use. The fault and blame falls on them if there is a problem. Powercolor is one of those brands I have always steered away from, as I have always heard bad things.

In your case, though, I bet it is just a bad card... nothing to do with the fact that it AGP.

 

[spotless]

try custom drivers like omega-drivers, new catalyst are mostly configured for pci-e, i my self use 1600 pro & Xtreme G catalyst 8.2

 

[clay12340]

MrsBytch,

If I pull the card out and put the old one back in memtest, scandisk, and the WD hdd utility all check out fine and the system runs flawlessly. With the new card in it all goes to crap.

Memtest can't even address all the available memory with the new card installed. Which seems strange to me as I didn't realize that system memory was affected by your video card aside from the AGP aperture or whatever it is that claims a little chunk to talk to the card. I didn't try the HDD utilities with the new card in as I'm guessing the memory error is what is causing the HDD confusion.

 

[sdrac]

@OP:
I have a similiar setup to you (A8V Deluxe but w/FX-60 - rest of specs under my config) that I just put
a Sapphire 3850 512MB AGP card into.
I took the stock cooler off and stuck on an Accelro S1 rev.2 with two 100 Silent Scythe Fans.
I used the drivers on the disk that came with the card - figured I'd start with them.

So far it seems to work fine. With everything at stock settings I'm pulling just over 9K in 3dmark06 vs.
around 5K with my old x1950 Pro. And it runs really cool - idle at 25C, load hasn't gone over 35C!
I'm looking forward to overclocking the card and cpu and seeing what i can get out of this old rig.
So no complaints from me - ATI/Sapphire did a decent job in my opinion (with the exception maybe of the
stock cooler that Sapphire put on - which I new would need to be replaced).

I agree with some of the other posters - you've either got a bad card or possibly bad memory.

My only complaint/question: Is there a utility that recognizes the card and will allow me to tweak it?
I was using ATI Tool but it doesn't seem to recognize the card - using CCC right now but thats not nearly as
nice at ATI Tool was.

Sdrac

 

[Naw-yi]

ati card drivers have a problem with the fast write setting, and there is a fix for it, this is why i use omega drivers, they have the fast write fix with the driver. i have the x1650pro and had a few problems at the start but i work with computers for a liven, so ive submitted some fixes for ati installations. 1st of all this is what i would recommend:

1. reinstall the previous graphics card and start the system, or onboard vga, the system needs to boot to os.

2. go to add/remove programs and unistall .NET frameworks past 1.1hotfix ( 2.0,3.0and 3.5).

3. install .NET framework 2.0. using microsoft update site.

4. uninstall all the nvidia drivers, then turn off rig.

5. reinstall ati card and bootup.

6. install ati drivers. now i would install these drivers: http://www.omegadrivers.net/

7. update .NET framework to 3.5.


ati tool is included with omega drivers and the agp fast write fix.

 

[eddieandgayle]

First time on this site i hope i am posting in the right spot

I bought a sapphire 3850 agp 512 ddr3 installed it with default everything on the cd that came with it took along time but eventually it finished rebooted and seemed to detect it fine since the first test i use it to move a window around and there was no lag and it was showing as ati radeon 3850 in display properties but ati tool or ati tray tools or any games would not detect it right ati tray tool would show the 3d window and show 1280 frames per second with it open and a bench of ati tool would give me 15800 way past the next card to compare it to which was a x1900xtx so its doing something but when i look at the clocks it says default clocks 600 and 829 or whatever the right ones are for this card i checked they were right but actual clocks were a whopping 13.50 and 13.50 or 13.50 and 27 ddr odd also age of empires would load and play music but the screen would freeze without even beginning to show people walking around but the music would play and i could shutdown properly using the power button with one touch it would play the music and shut down now though after installing and removing and reinstalling trying all these things people have tried on here i just get a blue screen once i think it is finally working or i can have it work half way like i described before

i have tried my thermaltake 680 watt pure power power supply with it no go so i took it out
it is in a dell optiplex gx270 with 2 gigs ram (2x1) and a pentium 4 800mhz fsb 3.0 512 kb cache cpu with HT and the stock power supply since it dont seems to make a difference also i have tried it in a gigabyte ga 7vax with agp 8x and adjustable agp voltage no go there either both systems work fine with a x800xl and a 7600gt also the little error light on the video card never comes on and the card just gets nice and warm not cool not hot kinda the same as my x1800xt does can anyone help? is this a dead card?

 

[SonDa5]

I had a Saphire AGP8x HD3850 and it worked great with the 8.6 drivers and CCC.

Scored over 9,000 benchmarks on 3dMark06.

Played Crysis, ORange Box, and Bioshock without problems. Best AGP8x card.

Used Corsair TX650W Power supply.

 

[KAR87]

I have a Powercolor AGP 3850 ATI Radeon 512 GDDR3, And basically it becomes a brick when you install the drivers for it. Without the dirvers the damn thing works, but laggy to say the least. I have installed Omega drivers, ATI drivers, hot fix, CCC, Control panel versions, all to no avail. All of which is on a fresh install of Win XP pro, I even installed all updates prior to installing vid drivers, Any help would be appreciated due to the fact that powercolor doesnt have tech support, and ATI doesnt admit the card exsists. I have played with Bios setting, Flashed to newest Version, went back to original, Apeture size, Overclock, underclock Voltage, you name it I have done it! I have done everything but force the drivers to install in the command directory or make a Registry edit or something.

The funny thing about this is, My friend has a 2800XP rig on an Nvidia NForce 2 chipset, and the card ran wonderful, World of warcraft full Visuals ran 80+ FPS! maybe because he has Winxp home? I try to buy a card to make my system last a little longer until i have to upgrade to Quadcore/PCIe system, and I cant get this card to work.

Also My systems specs are as follows: P4 Prescott 3.2 Ghz HT, 4 Gb 3200 CL 2.5 OCZ gaming Edition Ram, PowerColor 3850 AGP 512MB, Albatron 865PE pro Ver II mobo, Sound blaster Live 5.1, Dual SATA 150GB Barracuda HD's, Asus DVD-R/DVD-RW drive SATA

 

[bpdski]

I was trying to research this awhile back to see if it made sense for me to buy a new card for my AGP system. From what I read, it relates to the chipset. If your motherboard is an nForce based AMD system, you're in good shape. If you have a VIA based AMD system, it won't work. I can't speak for Intel P4 systems as I wasn't researching that, but your P4 is probably not powerful enough to drive a modern card. This applies for any AGP card based on the ATI 2000 or newer chips. I also read that virtually no one could ever get AVIVO (HD playback) to work right with AGP.

Since I didn't have a huge investment in my Athlon system, I decided it wasn't worth fooling with and built a new AMD system with a 4650 PCIe card on a 770 chipset mobo. This is an HTPC system, so my concern is HD support not games. CPU, memory, mobo and video card was all less than $250.

Cheers

 

[Guest]

I also have the Powercolor 3850 AGP card and it works just fine on my VIA chipset based system. AVIVO (HD acceleration) also works fine: I watch HD (H.264) movies almost entirely decoded on the GPU (CPU utilization < 20%). It works both in WinXP and Win7RC. I have used different driver versions from Catalyst 8.8 to 9.5 without problem.

Here is my system:

Asus A8V Deluxe (BIOS version: 1018.002)
Athlon64 3200+
2x512MB OCZ PC3200 RAM
300 Watt PSU

 

[PC_Plum]

I've jsut both this agp card and it works for me. The only thing I can't figure out is how to utilise this card for playing movies. I use VLC.

 

[_aaaa_]

There are 2 codecs (as far as I know) that utilize the GPU for H.264 video decoding: the Cyberlink decoder (comes with PowerDVD) and the built-in decoder in Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

 

[Guest]

i bought the his icq 3850 agp and had to download the ati hotfix 9.4 drivers to get it to run but now im crashing when i try to play aao or hidden and dangerous 2 my pc just goes off and then it will self boot right back up and run till i try to play again. im racking my brain trying to figure this one out.my mobo is old agp msi ms-6712 with an amd xp 3000 cpu 2 gigs ram pc3200 700 watt psu 80 gig hdd.

 

[BenShami]

It must be a bad card. The powercolor agp driver worked for me....later I installed the hotfix from ati and that worked as well.

 

[7stg]

i have the sapphire 3850. downloaded the drivers from sapphire and all was ok and they seem to keep pace with ati at getting the driver modified and posted. direct from ati does not work with agp, there are some instructions out there to modify the driver if so inclined. Also, when trying to install in linux i black screened fedora and opensuse. i am a linux rookie though.

 

[loserdave]

Try what Naw-yi said
Also, small suggestion,,, might not work.,,
Try removing the sound blaster card and uninstalling it's drivers ,, then uninstall all graphics card drivers and start over setting up the graphics card first.

 

[anom]

i bought the his icq 3850 agp and had to download the ati hotfix 9.4 drivers to get it to run but now im crashing when i try to play aao or hidden and dangerous 2 my pc just goes off and then it will self boot right back up and run till i try to play again. im racking my brain trying to figure this one out.my mobo is old agp msi ms-6712 with an amd xp 3000 cpu 2 gigs ram pc3200 700 watt psu 80 gig hdd.

i had the same MSI MB last year and my ati 2600xt card would cause it to crash or blurred graphics,put the card into a P4 rig and it worked perfectly first time.

I think a previous post nailed it with the cards only work nforce chips

 

[Keiki646]

I brought at HIS ATI 3850 512 GDDR3 256Bit a long time ago for the Intel Pentium 4 system.
what I have done to that system what I did my my current system. Add some very high cooling fans running more than 2500RPM's
I gave it a face lift with a fan controller monitor and a CPU controller. I overclock that baby and it works great with crisis on medium/high settings.
my wife plays games too and she is happy with the system. I have 4Gb of memory and two 500GB drives Asus heat sink.

If anyone having some issues with the AGP video cards maybe you should try looking for the new Hotfix they have out now 9.8 AGP hotfix or 9.8 version
make sure you uninstalled the old driver and restart and install the new one...

 

[Mousemonkey]

Another pointless resurrection that shall now laid to rest for good.