3850 AGP OC'ing, Vmods, experiences, suggestions, where to buy

[jtleon]

Crysis 2 stable @ 837/1099Mhz

See for yourself - avg 55°C running C2. This is the Sapphire card @ 837/1099 @ 1.254V.

I am using this old Zerotherm cooler (with a fan mod). And...I am using the GELID Extreme GC TIM (since I am almost out of MX-2).

Note that all C2 graphics settings are on ULTRA.

 

[TRWOV]

Haha! I'm playing that same level right now.

Impressive clocks on that Sapphire. I might break down and get the Icy Vision after all just to see how far can my HIS card go.

I'm sad to report that the lapping didn't improve my CPU stability. I'm starting to think that my board is the weak link. The 865 chipset wasn't supposed to support FSB1066 quad cores in the first place plus the board only has 4 power phases; it's a feat that it runs as well as it does.

 

[jtleon]

Just a minute - Did you pull the chipset heatsink on the left of the CPU (in your picture) and replace its TIM with good stuff - and lap that chipset sink since your taking it off. Your chipset needs just as much love as the CPU.

Also, locate the mobo VRMs - do they have sinks? Like you said before you need to put on those as well - since you are pushing the system beyond its design limits. I will put up a photo of my setup here - to show how crazy things can get.

I took an old CPU sink, cut it up, lapped the pieces, and used high conductive epoxy - attaching to all the naked VRM's of this board. With the Blue Orb supplying plenty of flow, these VRM's are mucho cool.

Haha! I'm playing that same level right now.
Impressive clocks on that Sapphire. I might break down and get the Icy Vision after all just to see how far can my HIS card go.
I'm sad to report that the lapping didn't improve my CPU stability. I'm starting to think that my board is the weak link. The 865 chipset wasn't supposed to support FSB1066 quad cores in the first place plus the board only has 4 power phases; it's a feat that it runs as well as it does.

 

[TRWOV]

My board doesn't have VRM heatsinks:

I'll be replacing the NB heatsink shortly with a copper one and I'm looking for a shop to order the Enzotech VRM heatsinks from.

 

[jtleon]

Ok..my best 3DMark06 ever...7854!

http://3dmark.com/3dm06/16499444

 

[jtleon]

Some love for PowerColor!

I wanted to test a Power Color HD3850 AGP - so using the Accelero S1 cooler with NO fan - above 800Mhz! I am enjoying the silence too - I don't know if I can stand going back to a noisy fan now!

Any updates TRWOV?

 

[Jstn7477]

I have a Sapphire 3850 AGP from ~2008, and I've recently resurrected it in a Sony Pentium 4 desktop with a 2.66GHz P4 @ 3.0GHz/150, 2GB Corsair DDR RAM and the original ASUS P4S533-VL (SiS 651 motherboard). Obviously, this system is a huge bottleneck, but I have been playing with my card and have it at 700/1000 @ 1.134v. 750MHz crashes even at the next voltage step, and by then the card runs pretty hot, so I'm fine with my current frequencies. Also the PCB under the VRM area is discolored brown so I'm taking it easy considering I have some new boards on the way.

Anyway, I just discovered Geeks.com and their selection of ancient refurbished boards for $25 a pop, so I literally bought 5, yes 5, refurbished boards to play with, since I have no common sense.

ASRock P4VM890 (installing 2.6GHz/800 P4 and random DDR)
ASRock K8NF6P-VSTA (Installing 2.4GHz 256K Athlon 64 and random DDR)
ASRock AM2NF3-VSTA (Installing 3850 AGP + Phenom 9750 + random DDR2)
ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (Installing BFG 7800GS + E6400 + random DDR2)
ASRock 775XFire-VSTA (might stay in the box for a while)

Probably going to stick with XP on most of them. Hopefully the NForce3 250 board isn't going to be a giant problem with XP, as I'm sure Vista or 7 may have driver problems with the chipset. At $25 each I don't really care if they go up in flames in a month, but hopefully they don't.

Speaking of drivers, anyone know of any 3850 hotfix drivers that don't suck balls? I literally can't even launch 3DMark03/06 on this rig with the 12.1 XP hotfix drivers, which is completely retarded.

 

[jtleon]

My current favorite driver is the Nitrous version 10.6 found here:

http://radeon.ru/downloads/drivers/n2o/

You must follow the install directions specifically - or they will not install.

jtleon

 

[Jstn7477]

I know it's not a 3850, but I believe my "unbreakable" BFG Tech 7800GS (G70 256MB) is finally on its last legs. It gets some nasty polygonal artifacts in Troll's Lair and Nature in 3DMark03, no matter the clock speeds, fan speed or PSU. Had this card since like 2007 and it's been in a ton of systems.

That leaves me with just the 3850 and an OEM ASUS GeForce4 MX 440 w/ 64MB 128bit DDR. I'm considering either getting a PowerColor 3450 AGP or a GeForce 6200 DDR2 if I need an extra card, but I'm torn between them since the 3450 is probably much faster than a 6200 but the 6200 is a universal, real AGP card.

 

[TRWOV]

I wanted to test a Power Color HD3850 AGP - so using the Accelero S1 cooler with NO fan - above 800Mhz! I am enjoying the silence too - I don't know if I can stand going back to a noisy fan now!

Any updates TRWOV?

Haven't done much. I've been playing Crysis and Warhead plus some Mirror's Edge. I've stuck with the CPU multi at 11x and, apart from the Crysis 2 crashes, haven't got any problems.

I had my sights on a used Icy Vision but didn't win the auction.

 

[jtleon]

Mirror's Edge - I have wondered about that game - is it worth buying?

 

[TRWOV]

It is a first person platform game that actually works. The levels are quite big and although there is a set path you can choose several ways to navigate the environment. You can get weapons by disarming the bad guys but it isn't advisable to play as an FPS as two or three shots are enough to kill you, your best bet is to run and jump.The graphics are very "clean", for lack of a better word. The keyboard controls are ok but some maneuvers are a bit awkward (specially the jump - turn - jump). Nothing a little customization wouldn't fix.

I'm playing mainly to test my PPU. I had some rough time getting it to work, it seems that the latest Physx drivers had some libraries missing and ME wouldn't detect the card. Had to use the 8.06 drivers.

 

[Jstn7477]

Got my boards in tonight. The P4VM890 was DOA but the rest work. I put together my AM2NF3-VSTA tonight with a stock Phenom 9750, 4*1GB DDR2 533, Windows XP SP3 and my 7800GS that acted broken on a P4 system but works fine on the AM2NF3-VSTA.

Let me tell you what, this is the fastest AGP board I have ever owned, and just in 3DMark01 I have ridiculous framerates I have never seen with P4 or Skt. 754 rigs and my 7800 GS.

26632 points in 3DM01 on a 7800GS G70 256MB @ 450/1300. P4 2.8GHz gets ~15K. Can't wait to get my 3850 in this rig and see what it can do.

 

[TRWOV]

I heard that the AM2NF3 had some issues with Rialto (the pcie-to-agp chip that ATi uses) but I don't know if those had been resolved later with a bios or driver. If you get it up and working I might have another AGP system to build

 

[Jstn7477]

I heard that the AM2NF3 had some issues with Rialto (the pcie-to-agp chip that ATi uses) but I don't know if those had been resolved later with a bios or driver. If you get it up and working I might have another AGP system to build

Yeah, I'll play with it more and see. I do know there are some crazy CPU/OS/card limitations but I'll let you guys know how that goes.

 

[Jstn7477]

Just got my Sapphire HD 3850 AGP running in my ASRock AM2NF3-VSTA (Under XP w/ 12.1 Cat AGP Hotfix, have not tested 7 yet where it may not work) and a quick 3DMark2001 run got me 32538 points at 700/1000 clocks.

I'm going to install '03 and '06 and bench the 3850, as well as swapping the 7800GS back in and seeing how well it fares. I'll update this post in a bit.

EDIT: OH, I forgot AMD drivers suck balls and I cannot launch 3DMark2003/2006 on XP. Going to try some driver from 2010 and see if it works.

 

[TRWOV]

I think that W7 windows update has nforce3 drivers, you should give it a go. You'll need other mean to connect to WU, like an USB WLAN adapter or something though.

You can always go back to XP if that doesn't work.

 

[Jstn7477]

Just tried Win7 on another HDD, and Microsoft did release their own nForce3 drivers with it, but the AMD drivers or whatever senses a multi-core CPU present and they get a code 43 or something, so it's stuck in VGA mode. Windows XP runs fine AFAIK except for 3DMark03/06 hanging with a full core of CPU usage on their splash screens with the 3850. 7800GS and MX 440 had no such issues if I recall. I may be stuck with the 7800GS in this rig, and I'll have to try out the PT880 Ultra board I got (775/PCIe x4/AGP 8x/E6400 C2D) and see if VIA has drivers worth a ****.

I wish the last company to release AGP cards didn't have notoriously bad drivers, and I wish the green team wasn't dumb either for not releasing any drivers for NF3, their last chipset before "bumpgate."

EDIT: Adding the flag -nosysteminfo to the target skips the broken system scan. Huzzah.

EDIT2: 3DMark03, 3850 on XP w/ 10.4 drivers: 31460 GPU/1574 CPU. Wow.
EDIT3: 3DMark06, 3850 on XP w/ 10.4 drivers: 10841 total (4228 SM2.0, 4815 SM 3.0, 3521 CPU).

Quite awesome to finally see my AGP cards unleashed by a "beefy" Phenom X4 lol.

 

[eidairaman1]

Vid Driver needed for WIn 7 64bit

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/CatalystAGPHotfix.aspx


http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=33128&st=0&p=184323&#entry184323

Cod43 error is due to NV not providing Proper GART for Vista (Vista Driver and 7 are similar but 7 is more adept at driver support to extent)

Just tried Win7 on another HDD, and Microsoft did release their own nForce3 drivers with it, but the AMD drivers or whatever senses a multi-core CPU present and they get a code 43 or something, so it's stuck in VGA mode. Windows XP runs fine AFAIK except for 3DMark03/06 hanging with a full core of CPU usage on their splash screens with the 3850. 7800GS and MX 440 had no such issues if I recall. I may be stuck with the 7800GS in this rig, and I'll have to try out the PT880 Ultra board I got (775/PCIe x4/AGP 8x/E6400 C2D) and see if VIA has drivers worth a ****.

I wish the last company to release AGP cards didn't have notoriously bad drivers, and I wish the green team wasn't dumb either for not releasing any drivers for NF3, their last chipset before "bumpgate."

EDIT: Adding the flag -nosysteminfo to the target skips the broken system scan. Huzzah.

 

[Jstn7477]

Yeah, I might just get a Sempron 130 for this board for $30 and Windows 7 could run fine, but I'm not worried about it. It's been a fun experiment nonetheless.

If anything, I'll probably pick up some DDR2 RAM because I just have crappy 533MHz pulls in there right now.

 

[eidairaman1]

via/sis fixed the issue quick, nv was greedy

 

[TRWOV]

I once had the AM2NF3 in mind when I still owned an X1950PRO but the NF3 woes pushed me towards my current Conroe865PE. Pretty solid board, worked with W7 out of the box. The only "issue" is that due to a chipset limitation only 3519MB can be recognized by the OS even in 64bit.

I still might give the AM2NF3 a chance if I can get the parts for cheap. I'm thinking a PII x4 945, 4GB DDR2 and HD4670 AGP

 

[eidairaman1]

http://www.asrock.com/support/note/AM2NF3-VSTA.html#Phenom

 

[Jstn7477]

So I tried XP x64 on the AM2NF3-VSTA, and the video drivers worked with the 3850, but performance was terribad graphics-wise. The 3850 only scored ~12000 points in 3DMark03 which is much less than the 32K I got with regular XP. Looks like this will be an XP only machine, which I'm alright with. Can't complain about $25 refurbished motherboards and parts I already have and can finally use/test again.

Anyway, tonight is ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 night as I put aside the AM2NF3-VSTA. I picked up some 2GB DDR2-800 sticks and some crappy Rocketfish CPU cooler (it's some 92mm 3 heatpipe HDTdeal that looks like a Cooler Master) from Worstbuy (I don't want to wait a week with Newegg, damnit) so I'm going to see what I can get out of my elderly E6400. I already noticed there is a 3.3GB address limit with the PT880 Ultra so I'm in the same boat as the Conroe865PE owners.

I really want to try out my Pentium Dual Core E6600 (Wolfdale 1066/2M) and see if it even works. If it does work, and Windows 7 works properly with great AGP support, this will probably be my good AGP rig. My AM2NF3-VSTA will probably stick with the 7800GS and sit around if this other board works better.

 

[TRWOV]

I think there's a modded bios for the 4CoreDual-SATA2 that goes around the RAM limit. Let me see if I find the link.


EDIT: Brain fart. The modded bios added support for 2GB DDR2 modules (the original bios only work with 1GB sticks). 3.3GB is still the limit:

http://www.pctreiber.net/asrock-bios-downloads?did=102