Apollo Radeon HD3850

d3lt4

Senior member
Jan 5, 2006
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I was thinking of getting this as an upgrade. It's $160 AR at newegg. link
Has anyone heard of Apollo? How about the cooler, and the lack of ram heatsinks?
I have ram heatsinks, but I'm just quisitive about buying from a brand I have never heard of before. And the card isn't as long as every other card either.

Do you think it's a good buy, or just a cheap unreliable version of the real thing?
If not, what should I get?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,583
10,785
136
For what it's worth, according to the only NewEgg review of the card, Apollo is shipping cards from the same OEM that manufactures cards for GECUBE and Apasonic. I know that doesn't exactly address your inquiry but someone here might know something about 3850 cards from at least one of those brands.
 

Sentry2

Senior member
Mar 21, 2005
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I'd buy one with a Standard return policy. I personally wouldn't care where the card is made but who's gonna back me up if it takes a crap. I'd much rather have a 1 year newegg replacement warranty than deal with some manufacturers. I'm not saying it's a bad brand though.


What's your budget for a new card right now?
 

AzN

Banned
Nov 26, 2001
4,112
2
0
I wouldn't count on the rebate.

If I were you I would get the visiontek $190 with free shipping. Comes with dual slot cooler and life time warranty.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,234
701
126
Edit #3: 28,505 in 3DMark03 at default settings.

Edit #2: Found a hot patch for 3DMark and ran 3DMark06. 7,751 at default settings with this card on PCIe 4X Asrock board, 2 GB of DDR2 at 667MHz 5-5-5-15 and an E6300 at stock. (Is that good? :p ). Also, 3DMark06 reports the correct amount of ram. Everything else does not.

Edit: I read around the web and found a setting on my board that took care of the artifacts so the card is now up and running, but I can't run 3DMark06 or 3DMark03. They both just sit there and stop responding (at the startup banner, doesn't make it to the test).

Still reports 1GB of ram from all utilities. Anyone know how to solve that, lol! :p


Well, I installed this card in an older Asrock board (775Dual-VSTA which only has a PCIe 4X slot) board to test it today (while waiting for new 45nm processors to arrive) and it didn't go well. The drivers (and every other hardware program for that matter) does indeed show 1024MB of ram. Must be some sort of glitch or mistake.

Running almost any game resulted in large artifacts. After uninstalling and reinstalling the card and 3 sets of drivers (using driver sweeper in between installs), still nothing. After reading around, apparantly, this board has issues with HD3870/3850 cards. There is a BIOS update for the newer 4 core model for these cards but none on this board yet. I'll try to tear the system down tomorrow to borrow the E6300 chip and do a fresh install in the new Abit IP35-E board and see what happens.

FWIW, the card idled in the 45C range and went as high as 65C while running (cool in my house today). It was not noticable when at idle, but it ramped up both the fan and my power supply fan when running under load.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,234
701
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Question to anyone who knows. The Apollo site states that this card runs core of 700MHz yet the Catalyst 8.1 shows a core of 670. I know I can bump it up manually, but shouldn't it recognize something from BIOS and do this automatically?
 

BlueAcolyte

Platinum Member
Nov 19, 2007
2,793
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Your PCIE 4x is limiting your PCIE x16 card. Your score is a bit low... I would expect around 9000. But I dunno.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,234
701
126
Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
Your PCIE 4x is limiting your PCIE x16 card. Your score is a bit low... I would expect around 9000. But I dunno.

Yes, I suspect it is. I have a new P35 board that I'm waiting for a 45nm Intel Quad to populate. That should improve the scores greatly!!! :)
 

d3lt4

Senior member
Jan 5, 2006
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Apparently Newegg isn't selling them anymore. I looked on the website and they are no where to be found. Kind of sad I missed out, but I really don't need to spend that much anyways.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,234
701
126
Originally posted by: d3lt4
Apparently Newegg isn't selling them anymore. I looked on the website and they are no where to be found. Kind of sad I missed out, but I really don't need to spend that much anyways.

Newegg seems to do that lately. They deactivate many items only to reactivate them later. Not sure what they are doing or why (Abit IP35-E comes to mind lately as an item that they did this to). It could show back up. YMMV.

O.T. Anyone know how to benchmark or timedemo the Demo version of UT3? I'm curious to my average fps in that game.