HD3850 (AGP) on Socket A and Socket 939

[Xcobra]

Originally posted by: WT
Xcobra, you missed the deal at TigerDirect last month for the AMD X2 3800+ for $50 ! I bought one after selling my Opteron 165 the month before, and my plans are to retire my wife's single core 3400+/AGP rig with the 3800+ X2/PCIe board I have.
That's not a bad setup for the game I play, so for less than $100 I was able to do that upgrade. Now, I should realize that gaming on my wife's PC is strictly verboten, but alas, I wanted to upgrade the rig anyhow.

Awesome. But I bought my 3850 for 50 bucks after MIR. Im just gonna have to buy an X2 off of the F/S forums. Im sure someone has one.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Originally posted by: Pederv

Originally posted by: cusideabelincoln
A note: While an upgrading to an HD3850 from an X800 does not make sense from a performance standpoint, there are many newer games available which the X800 has the "power" to play (even on lower settings on an Athlon XP) but it can't because it does not support DX 9.0c.

Perdev: Thanks for all of these results. It looks like an HD3850, paired with a faster Athlon XP, does provide a good improvement in newer games than an X800, but in older games there seems to be no improvement at all. I think an HD3650 wold probably be a better (more economical) solution for an upgrade over an X800.

You're right cusideabelincoln, the HD3650 would be the more economical solution to an AGP upgrade. I used the HD3850 because I wanted to push these systems as far as they could go. I knew the 3850 would put the bottleneck at the CPU and I go to prove this by overclocking the 3850.

I used the X800 AIW cards as a baseline because they were the only other AGP card that could run all of the 3DMark tests. The Radeon 7000 could only run 3DMark2000, the Radeon 8500 could run both 3DMark2000 and most of 3DMark2001SE but coudn't run test 16 because it requires DX9.

Well I wasn't judging you. As you might recall, I have an older Athlon XP system with an X800GT and it is starting to show its age. The performance of the card, even in the same games I've been playing since I got it, seems to have dropped. And there's no way I'm going to reformat the system because I have so many games and applications installed. I've ran all kinds of defrags, reg cleaners, and etc and the card is showing signs of old age. Of course I had it overclocked for quite a bit, so it's not a surprise, but there are some games (like Company of Heroes) that I would like to play on this old system (which I have at my parent's house) but the lack of SM3.0 support prevents me from doing so. I'd like to consider an X1650 Pro or HD3650 in this machine, since they are much cheaper than an HD3850.

 

[JaBro999]

Pederv, thanks for the post and the data.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: JaBro999
Pederv, thanks for the post and the data.

:thumbsup:

I still have plenty of ole AGP systems that are still extremely useful systems.

I may even upgrade a few from forum sales.

Thanks for the info OP.

 

[dug777]

Yeah, my old 2000+@2.1Ghz tbred machine was horribly CPU limited with my 6800GS heart: that card, oc'd to comfortably give me a faster card than the Ultra).

Interestingly enough it had a similar power consumption to my current rig:

Old rig: 2.1Ghz tbred (1.775vcore)/1.5GB DDR/ASUS A7V8X/6800GS@~470/1300 (from memory).

130W at idle with s2kctl enabled and about 230W at full gaming load

New rig: Q6600/4GB DDR2/Asus P5Q PRO/4850@790/1028.

110W idle and about 230W under full gaming load for my Q6600 (.984vidle/1.1vload)/4GB DDR2/Asus P5Q PRO/4850@790/1028.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

i dont think its pointless at all to upgrade s939 systems. I like my computer and how it performs. i get almost 8500K in 3dmark 06, which is great for my games. When i feel the itch to upgrade, i'll do it and i'll make it a full upgrade. MY fps didn't really go up because of my new video card (from a x1650 to a 8800GTS 320mb to current) but it let me max out almost all of my games and let me buy a newer high resolution monitor to game on.

Adding in a radeon 3850 in socket A systems wont raise the fps by much, but you could crank up the AA really high and have those games run beautifully and achieve the maximum fps possible from your cpu/ram.

 

[betasub]

Agree with cusideabelincoln's point about SM3.0 capability.

I have family members playing low-power games on their old SktA or P4 systems. Some of the newer games they wanted to play don't require much in the way of graphics power but do require SM3.0. So Radeon 9000 and Geforce FX series cards didn't cut it, but my old 6600GT AGP cards gave them the upgrade they required (with no worries about their CPUs being too slow or the power supply not being strong enough). If they'd been spending a few $ on a new card, I guess I'd have pointed them towards the cheap HD3650 AGP.

 

[nemesismk2]

Thanks for posting Pederv, it was a very interesting read.

 

[Pederv]

Well my nephew that got this system:

XP2700 (462) down clocked to 1.872GHz
K7N2-Delta
2GB RAM
HD3850 (AGP)

He liked it so much that he's been grounded from his computer for playing Unreal Tournament 2004 instead of doing his homework.

Just a reminder, the test scores on that system were:

XP2700+ @ 1.872 with HD3850
3DMark2000 - 11338
3DMark2001 - 15081
3DMark03 - 21848
3DMark05 - 6351
3DMark06 - 4034

His older sister was complaining that she should have gotten that system since she does the most gaming. Her system was a:

1GHz P3
ATI 9250 (AGP)
384MB RAM

Its test scores were:

3DMark2000 - 5668
3DMark2001 - 4356
3DMark03 - 715
3DMark05 - Will Not Run
3DMark06 - Will Not Run

Less than a week after I delivered the XP2700 system my nieces system looses the hard drive. So I decided to surprise her and upgrade her system. She got:

5000 X2
Gigabyte MA78GPM-DS2H
4GB RAM

I figured the Integrated Graphics would be better than her old 9250. On the tests it scored:

3DMark2000 - 14172
3DMark2001 - 11314
3DMark03 - 3657
3DMark05 - 3019
3DMark06 - 1398

It was better, but her brothers system did better in most tests. I gave her the PCI-E equivalent of the video card in her brothers system and her test scores went to:

3DMark2000 - 21994
3DMark2001 - 30287
3DMark03 - 30055
3DMark05 - 13431
3DMark06 - 8607

She's had a chance to play a couple of her games on the upgraded computer, and SHE LIKES IT ALOT!

The family system is an HP system with:

Windows Vista
5600 X2
2GB RAM
Integrated Graphics

The only test I ran on it scored:

3DMark06 - 378

All of the kids systems have Windows XP

 

[Leyawiin]

Thanks for the tests O.P.. I have an Athlon64 3700+ on a socket 754 mobo with an X850 Pro flashed to an X850 XT. It actually works pretty well (can play Lord of the Rings Online at 1280x1024 on medium settings), but I've been wondering about the HD 3850 AGP since it came out. Its my back up PC, but from seeing the results I don't think it makes sense for me (point of diminishing returns and all that).

BTW, you're the kind of uncle every did should have. :thumbsup:

 

[L337Llama]

Does the video card help with decoding video? I'm curious, I gave my older computer to my family, which is a socket a system with a 6800. Nobody really games on it, but I was thinking of adding a video card with hdmi so it can output to a tv and since the processor is kind of slow, I dont know how well it would handle large video files.

 

[evolucion8]

When I had my Pentium M and the HD 3850 AGP, I was able to watch BluRay movies and the CPU usage never went over 30%, was very enjoyable, I was a bit CPU limited, but I was able to play most games in high, even Crysis with out FSAA, but when I played Far Cry 2 I hit a wall, and no matter which graphics settings I used, the performance difference was small, it's a game which doesn't tax the GPU enough and then the CPU becomes the bottleneck, weird game. But overall, the performance of that system is outstanding, funny enough, my single core Pentium M scored slighly higher than your X2 in 3Dmark06, strong little chip.

 

[Pederv]

Originally posted by: Leyawiin
Thanks for the tests O.P.. I have an Athlon64 3700+ on a socket 754 mobo with an X850 Pro flashed to an X850 XT. It actually works pretty well (can play Lord of the Rings Online at 1280x1024 on medium settings), but I've been wondering about the HD 3850 AGP since it came out. Its my back up PC, but from seeing the results I don't think it makes sense for me (point of diminishing returns and all that).

I think most people are looking at the scores quantitatively, I'm looking at them relatively.
The scores for my daughters 3800X2 system were:

3800X2 with X800 AIW (AGP)
3DMark2000 - 16830
3DMark2001 - 21038
3DMark03 - 11888
3DMark05 - 6021
3DMark06 - 2135

3800X2 with 3850 (AGP)
3DMark2000 - 16575
3DMark2001 - 22753
3DMark03 - 26735
3DMark05 - 10435
3DMark06 ? 6883


Since 3DMark2000 is DX7 and 3DMark2001 is DX8, ignore them.

Looking at the scores quantitatively you see an improvement of:

3DMark03 - 14847
3DMark05 - 4414
3DMark06 - 4748

Looking at the scores relatively I see an improvement of:

3DMark03 - 125%
3DMark05 - 73%
3DMark06 - 222%

With some people making purchase decisions on 15% - 20% performance difference, you would think that a 73% to 222% performance difference would be a no brainer.

 

[chris89]

Can you post the 3dmark03 details page on the 3800+ x2 system?

I got 24,040 points on 3dmark03 on the HD4670 AGP. 3dmark03 apparently only hits on 1 thread. Since I'm running two 3Ghz Intel Xeon's with around 5MB of cache per cpu, and 4GB of ram. The Intel Xeon's I'm running have Hyper-Threading so there is 4 threads in total.

I wanted to compare side-by-side to the HD4670 to see really what the difference is in terms of fps. The HD4670's 128bit memory is an enormous bottleneck. I wish ATI would have built a 16 ROP HD4670 with 1GB of 256bit GDDR3 AGP... That would be awesome!

THANKS

 

[Erenhardt]

Can you post the 3dmark03 details page on the 3800+ x2 system?

I got 24,040 points on 3dmark03 on the HD4670 AGP. 3dmark03 apparently only hits on 1 thread. Since I'm running two 3Ghz Intel Xeon's with around 5MB of cache per cpu, and 4GB of ram. The Intel Xeon's I'm running have Hyper-Threading so there is 4 threads in total.

I wanted to compare side-by-side to the HD4670 to see really what the difference is in terms of fps. The HD4670's 128bit memory is an enormous bottleneck. I wish ATI would have built a 16 ROP HD4670 with 1GB of 256bit GDDR3 AGP... That would be awesome!

THANKS

I don't think he will respond. Look at the dates!

 

[Zardnok]

I don't think he will respond. Look at the dates!

I got a dozen posts in thinking this was some cool retro build thread for a collection and then noticed the date.

 

[SPBHM]

Can you post the 3dmark03 details page on the 3800+ x2 system?

I got 24,040 points on 3dmark03 on the HD4670 AGP. 3dmark03 apparently only hits on 1 thread. Since I'm running two 3Ghz Intel Xeon's with around 5MB of cache per cpu, and 4GB of ram. The Intel Xeon's I'm running have Hyper-Threading so there is 4 threads in total.

I wanted to compare side-by-side to the HD4670 to see really what the difference is in terms of fps. The HD4670's 128bit memory is an enormous bottleneck. I wish ATI would have built a 16 ROP HD4670 with 1GB of 256bit GDDR3 AGP... That would be awesome!

THANKS

as far as I know 3dm03 is single thread, the 3800+ is k8 at 2Ghz or so, if your CPU is northwood or prescott at 3GHz I think the 3800+ would be faster anyway?

the 4670 was most of the time a better card, but many 4670 were sold out of spec, with much slower memory, even DDR2... and I guess in some cases the lower memory bandwidth compared to the 3850 could be a problem...

also I think XP 32bit is the best OS for 3dm03, if you are running something else it's not going to help,

I got a dozen posts in thinking this was some cool retro build thread for a collection and then noticed the date.

AGP was already retro in 2008