Anyone wanna buy a practically new HD3850 AGP?

[Groundbound1]

I don't wanna give up on it yet, because I knew going into this that the drivers are still pretty bad, but I was really hoping for a LITTLE better.

Performance thus far is only about 1/5 better than my 9600XT, which is disappointing to say the least.

It was an upgrade for sure, but I hope ATI or Sapphire can do a little better with the next driver release, because as of right now, a worthwhile $200 upgrade she ain't.


**EDIT**

OK, This IS interesting. This card, in order to save energy I guess, idles with the core clocked at 300Mhz, then when a load is put on it, it goes up to it's advertised speed of around 700Mhz. The problem is that FS9 doesn't seem to be putting enough load on the GPU, so it's STAYING at 300Mhz! How do I fix THAT?

[MWISimmer]

The problem is that FS9 doesn't seem to be putting enough load on the GPU, so it's STAYING at 300Mhz! How do I fix THAT?

Get FSX ?  :P  ;)

[JSpahn]

The problem is that FS9 doesn't seem to be putting enough load on the GPU, so it's STAYING at 300Mhz! How do I fix THAT?

Get FSX ?  :P  ;)

[Groundbound1]

**Edit**
Much better with a fresh install of everything. (I thought I could do without it, but I'm glad I tried it now!)


LET THE OOHH'S AND AAAHHH'S BEGIN!!

[Groundbound1]

DEAD!

[Harold]

Hi Joe,

Could it be that the new card was just too hungry for power? On the other hand that probably would've cost you a fuse instead of the board.

What's the status quo?

[Groundbound1]

I don't really know. All I'm sure of, is that the onboard LAN stopped working the day after I installed the new card.

The rest of it still seams ok, but I don't know enough about the inner workings of a motherboard to know if I run the risk of hurting other components if I were to continue to use it in the state it's in.

As far as the poor FS9 performance goes, ATI's "powerplay" was the reason for that. That's something they should tell you about right in the product description, rather than wait for you to find out about it on your own.

The card ran all the benchmarks I threw at it very well, so I don't think power was the issue, but who knows. I told Newegg what had happened and they agreed to waive the restocking fee and pay for return shipping, so I returned it. That's OK though, I'll just be without a "sim-puter" for a short time while I save up for some parts to build a