ASUS HD3650 SILENT AGP

[Wmaker]

I have about 2 years old MB with AGP slot. I've soldiered on with ancient Radeon 9500Pro until now. The card started acting up about 1,5 ago...I just dropped AGP speed from 8x to 4x and it was been doing just fine until now. Fans bearings are about gone and at times the card can be a bit noisy. Well, you get the picture...

The funny thing is that I've been able to run AH2 fairly nicely with 1024-textures and around 40FPS (though it sometimes drops too low for good gun solutions, etc...).

So I'm looking for a cheap AGP card for the time my AGP-slotted motherboard has left. Don't want to buy anything too expensive because when the MB decides to blow up I'm gonna go for PCI-E anyway.

ASUS HD3650 SILENT AGP - card seems like a good choise. It is reasonably priced here and certainly will be fast enough for AH if the 9500Pro almost was. On top of that, unlike the Sapphire's version this ASUS card uses only heat sink for cooling which is a pretty nice feature IMO.

Does anyone have any experience on the card in question?

[Fulmar]

What's AGP?

:

[wrag]

Tiger direct was selling genuine ATI 1600 for around $60 a little while ago.

Heard complaints about NON ATI drivers for the card you mentioned???

[Wmaker]

Heard complaints about NON ATI drivers for the card you mentioned???

No I haven't, please tell me more!

[wrag]

Read the customer ratings here....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=ati+agp

Some of the cards listed, have according to some customers, driver problems.

Was thinking of upgrading from my agp ati1600 but decided to wait.

It's also possible that the drivers are fixed?

[Ack-Ack]

No I haven't, please tell me more!

The AGP 3850 is a rather decent card, actually it's the best AGP video card on the market. 

The driver issues affect some while not others.  When I first installed my 3850 (Sapphire AGP) XP wouldn't see it and couldn't install it using the old school method of going the adding new hardware method.  I was able to fix it using the AGP Hotfix Catalyst drivers.  So, if you're going to go the AGP 3850 route, I would download and install the latest AGP hotfix drivers (there should be one for the 8.6 catalyst drivers, it not you can use the 8.5 hotfix drivers) and use those to install your 3850 AGP card. 

I recently updated to the 8.6 catalyst drivers without having to install the 8.6 hotfix, just the 8.5 hotfix when I initially installed my card.  However, some people that have upgraded to the 8.6 drivers had to install the hotfix in order to get their OS to recognize the card.


ack-ack

[Wmaker]

The AGP 3850 is a rather decent card, actually it's the best AGP video card on the market.

Yep, I've read the same thing. Some even claim it's a bit too fast for single core CPUs. 3850 is about 50% more expensive here compared to the 3650 and I want to do this upgrade on the cheap. That's the reason why 3650 instead of the 3850.

The driver issues affect some while not others.  When I first installed my 3850 (Sapphire AGP) XP wouldn't see it and couldn't install it using the old school method of going the adding new hardware method.  I was able to fix it using the AGP Hotfix Catalyst drivers.  So, if you're going to go the AGP 3850 route, I would download and install the latest AGP hotfix drivers (there should be one for the 8.6 catalyst drivers, it not you can use the 8.5 hotfix drivers) and use those to install your 3850 AGP card. 

I recently updated to the 8.6 catalyst drivers without having to install the 8.6 hotfix, just the 8.5 hotfix when I initially installed my card.  However, some people that have upgraded to the 8.6 drivers had to install the hotfix in order to get their OS to recognize the card.

This is something I have to look more into. With my luck I will probably have enough of problems...

Problem just is that there aren't much choices out there anymore. AFAIK Nvidia haven't really brought any much new AGP cards on the market. There might be some older decent speed cards left in retailers' stocks but the DX.10 support would be nice for the near future as well. And the 3650 would offer fairly nice performance for it's price...oh well, like I said, gotta look into it.

[wrag]

A genuine ATI card does not seem to have these problems.

You might want to looks for a 1600 or maybe a 1650 if you can find them.

They are better then say a 9800 or 9500 and some think there better then the 2600?

As I said Tiger Direct was selling those for about $60?

Don't think the 3000 series had any actually made by ATI?

Can't recall seeing any?

[Ack-Ack]

A genuine ATI card does not seem to have these problems.

Geniune ATI cards also have the same issue with the driver install problem that is fixed by using the hotfix catalyst drivers.


ack-ack

[wrag]

Geniune ATI cards also have the same issue with the driver install problem that is fixed by using the hotfix catalyst drivers.


ack-ack

Really?  Don't recall seeing any genuine ati cards in the 3000 series?

The 1600 and 1650 NON-ati have given some problems BUT the ati versions SEEM to install NP?

[Ack-Ack]

Really?  Don't recall seeing any genuine ati cards in the 3000 series?

The 1600 and 1650 NON-ati have given some problems BUT the ati versions SEEM to install NP?

It's a driver bug in the Catalyst driver package that sometimes (usually 90% of the time) that won't see your AGP video card when you try to install it.  The bug only cropped up with the Catalyst 8.xxx series of drivers, the 7.xxx Catalyst series don't have this issue. 

With some of the older ATI AGP cards such as the 1600 series, you can install the normal ATI 8.xxx series Catalyst drivers just fine but when you try and run a D3D game, you'll either get a black screen or a d3ddraw.dll error.  My previous card was an ATI 1650 512meg AGP card and I had the same issues with the Catalyst drivers as I do with my 3850 card I replaced the 1650 with.

It took a long time for ATI to address this problem with their Catalyst drivers and AGP cards (technically not really fixed, otherwise ATI wouldn't release an AGP hotfix after every Catalyst revision), which is one of the reasons why I used the Omega drivers for such a long time since he tweaked the drivers and fixed the AGP issues.  Unfortunately, he hasn't updated his custom drivers since January.


ack-ack 

[Krusty]

What CPU do you have, and how much RAM?

Unless you've got a certain amount of RAM and a certain speed or level of CPU, a 3850 isn't going to perform much better than a x1600 (for example) because the system just can't handle it.

[Fulmar]

What CPU do you have, and how much RAM?

Unless you've got a certain amount of RAM and a certain speed or level of CPU, a 3850 isn't going to perform much better than a x1600 (for example) because the system just can't handle it.

Tru 'dat!