ATI HD 3870 with Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 MoBo?

[dmarook]

Anyone here using the ATI HD 3870 with Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 MoBo (Bios 1.80)?

Would it be possible to give some feedback on:

How easy is it to setup?


What is the performance like.


Any luck at all with Vista?


Which manufacturer/Brand are you using?



As the Nvidia midrange cards are no go with this board, I guess the 3870 is the way to go. I was under the impression that the 3870 has a PCI-E 2.0 interface like the Nvidia cards (Or am I wrong?), so how can this card work without GPU bios modification out of the box? Does this mean there is hope for the 8800 GT with driver update (after updating the MoBo bios to 1.80)? While people have managed to get the 8800 GTS working after downgrading the GPU bios, it is not a practical solution for people who are on a gradual upgrade path with this board and not necessarily have a second computer handy with a PCI-E 2.0 slot.

Thanks in advance for all your comments and replies.

 

[Engineer]

I have the 775Dual-VSTA board which is very similar to your board. I installed the Apollo HD3850 512M (not an HD3870, but something close) last week. At first, I had terrible artifiact issues and was going to return the card as nothing I did would fix them. Finally, after searching for a day or two, I found a motherboard setting (PCIe Pipeline to disable) that corrected the issue.

Using an E6300 (stock) with this board and 2GB of 667MHz PC2-5300 running at 5-5-5-15 2T, the card did a respectible 7,751 in 3DMark06 and 28,000+ in 3DMark03. It runs UT3 at 1600x1200 with very well (not sure if all settings are on or not) - much, much, much better than 7600GT card. For $159.99 after rebate and free shipping, I can't complain. The HD3870 should be better, although I can't guess as to how much.

The 1.8 BIOS of your board has a patch for HD3850/3870's so that should correct some issues, if any, with those cards.

Good luck!

(oh, this is with Windows XP Professional)

 

[dmarook]

Thanks for your reply Engineer. Anyone else?

 

[disastinator]

I have the Gigabyte GV-RX387512H running on this board with an E2200 oc'd to 2926 MHz via BSEL mod and 1.80a BIOS. 3DMark06 is 9950. I have not done any BIOS or software tweaks to improve performance and the drivers are what came from the CD. BIOS settings are mostly at default (optimal setting).

The Gigabyte driver install program would not work so I had to install the drivers (Video and HD Audio) via the Device Manager. TF2 works fine, no weird artifacts.

OS: Windows XP Pro

 

[dmarook]

Did you not try the ATI Catalist drivers? By the way, your answer gives me a confidence boost about getting this card for my motherboard.