HD 3850 agp, will it work with this?

elmace

Hi, I would like to purchase that video card because yesterday I bought a HD 2600 Pro and that thing its kind of weak, I replaced a 9800 Pro 128MB, but my brother said that it was kind of slow for (raids?) in World of Warcraft. I installed the latest omega drivers and did not see much improvement from the 9800 Pro. So I have been thinking of buying that HD 3850 but im not really sure if it will work with this pc. Here are the specs:

Motherboard: Abit nf7-s
CPU: AMD Athlon XP-M 2600+ @ 2.2 Ghz 200x11 1.65v
RAM: 1.5 Gb of ddr pc3200
Power supply: Antec True Power Trio TP3-430

So the question is if I will be able to use that power supply, since he bought not too long ago, but too late to return it. The HD 3850 comes with an adapter for the power so that it uses regular 4 pin moles connections, I think.

Thank you very much for all your help and hope to be able to use that Power supply, or what other video card can I replace that HD 2600 Pro 512MB with since that computer is pretty much being used to play World of Warcraft often.

Link for HD 3850: Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100228L Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready Video Card - Retail

elmace

forgot to add a link to my power supply for more info:

Newegg.com - Antec True Power Trio TP3-430 ATX12V 430W Power Supply with Three 12V Rails 100 - 240 V UL, CUL, FCC, TUV, CE, C-tick, CCC, CB - Retail

Please any help will be really appreciated.

The question is pretty much if I can get away by using that power supply with that video card.

Witchfinder

Hi mate it may work but from what i have learned its better to have a single 12v rail for the higher end graphics cards
Your PSU does seem to be a bit weak on the 12v rails If i were you i would upgrade to a single dedicated 12v rail PSU with at least 33A

I am no expert but i was in this position too and found it was best to buy a new PSU as before my old one would run VERY hot and i had lower FPS than i do now.

NeoRinTinTin

I think it's a processor issue. You'll see just so much improvement until your processor bottlenecks your graphics card.

kn00tcn

especially in something like WoW, i can almost guarantee processor bottleneck since yours is a bit slower than mine... unless you're trying to do like 1920x1200 6xAA or something

ut3 has an option to render up to half resolution, but my fps doesnt change at all (everything on max)

since i game at 1024x768, both my gfx & cpu share the bottlenecking, but if i up the rez, then i see the gfx hurting

generally, more objects/polygons ends up being a cpu bottleneck, unless there's a ton of effects coming out of those objects

elmace

Thank you very much for your reply, I kind of knew that the cpu was going to be a problem, and I kind of wanted to know if I could get away by using my current Power supply, since I believe that it is not 33Amps, I think mine is 16Amps, I sure that I still have one cable left with out use from the power supply, right now im using the pci-e power cable, and that one is on its own.

He plays Wow at 1440x900 and mostly everything in low settings for what I remember.

Thank you very much again for your help, and if you think that I can get any more benefit by upgrading to the HD 3850 and that my Power supply can handle it please let me know since I have this week to bring that HD 2600 back to best buy for a refund.

Witchfinder

I agree that a better CPU would be a good idea especially for gaming but the question i believe was about the PSU
I dont really think that a 16A PSU will be powerful enough I had problems with my HD 2600 before i got a new power supply and I have to say for me my HD 2600 works fine with the AGP hotfix I can play Crysis on medium no problem and Bioshock looks awesome and is very smooth on high I am dissapointed that the latest drivers wont install though
As for your question i would say you shoul upgrade your PSU also ( i was in same position ... couldnt really afford too but it was money well spent no more overheating probs.

elmace

WHat AGP hotfix? Right now he is using Radeon Omega Drivers 4.8.442 (Catalyst 7.12). You are right about a better CPU, but right now I can not spend the money on a new mobo/cpu becasue I will have to upgrade to ddr2 and pci-e video card. And buying a new power supply its not a possibility because I just got one about 2 - 3 months ago, and I would not know what to do with that one.

Unless there is a motherboard that supports agp cards and ddr ram, I would consider it so that I can use the HD 2600 pro and 1.5 gb of ddr 1.

Thank you very much for your help, and looks like the final answer is that I should not get the HD 3850 unless I buy a new power supply for it. Right?

Witchfinder

Forgive me if i misunderstood I just assumed you had the HD 2600 PRO AGP with 512 memory (like i have) there is an official ATI 8.1 driver hotfix for AGP cards (you just install this as it is an actual driver) It seems to work ok for my needs ie Crysis on medium , Call of duty 4 on medium and Bioshock on high
I do have some slight issues with it but overall it is ok and runs Crysis on medium perfectly for a budget card i cant expect anything more to be honest ...well better driver support but thats another topic

As for where the hotfix is i believe there is a thread with the link to it there

saying all this though i believe your current PSU to be a little weak for the HD 2600 PRO also sorry

elmace

Really about my psu being weak for that hd 2600 pro 512Mb agp? Seems to run ok so far, the bad thing is that the only game he has tried is WoW, so im not really sure how are the others games that he used to play, like Battlefield 2, half life 2, I will find out later then.

Thank you very much for your help, and for helping me save money on something that could not have worked.

kn00tcn

even if it worked, the massive bottleneck makes the 3850 totally not worth it

mc6415

it's gotta be a bottleneck if you haven't seen an improvement from a 9800 to a HD2600 Pro. I've got a HD2600 Pro 512mb allbeit in pci-e flavour, and I manage to run CoD4 and UT3 on near full, don't play WoW but heard its very easy on a system so I can't imagine a HD2600 Pro struggling with it unless as mentioned you're trying to run it at somethign like 2560 x 1600 with 4xaa and 16xaf.

clozak

Getting a faster and possibly a dual core processor would make a huge difference for you. I changed from a 2.5 Gig Barton to a stock running FX-60 using a x1950Pro and it was like a new world, even at 1600 x 1200.

I've since upgraded to the 3850 and with these fine members help, was convinced this is the fastest GPU I could go without upgrading my CPU, to avoid a bottleneck. BTW, I'm running my Sapphire 3850 AGP with a 500W dual 12v rail at 18A a piece and it overclocks to 705/935x2 without as much as a hiccup.

khelben1979

Interesting topic!

What do you people think I would get when it comes to performance if I replaced my nVidia Geforce7800GS against the Radeon3850 HD which you write about here?

My system:
Intel Pentium 2.8ghz northwood
nVidia Geforce7800GS (Gainward Golden sample)
2x512MB DDR RAM
500gig WD S-ATA
and some other things...

(I don't think I'm going to exchange my current card unless it brokes, but I'm curious.)

dj_stick

i have a feeling you'd get a better performance out of your system by getting more ram, maybe a better CPU, rather than replacing the video card - imo the cpu/ram will be a bigger bottleneck than the video card

khelben1979

Yes, I agree. Out of curiousity I am, however, very interested in some figures on how the performance gain would be over the Geforce7800GS.

My plan is that I will get a Phenom in the future and then I will get a better video card in the process.

Maybe next year or something, I don't know currently.

kn00tcn

still not really that good since by next year you could probably get current high end performance for the price of 3850 now

& you can put a phenom in an agp board?

khelben1979

No, I need to get a new motherboard with pci-express for it.