HIS H385F512ANP Radeon HD 3850 HDMI Dual DL-DVI (HDCP) 512MB (256bit) GDDR3 AGP Video Card Retail (RoHS)

List Price: $168.99 Discount Price: $149.99

Features:

• HIS IceQ 3 Turbo Technology
• ATI Avivo HD Technology ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series GPUs feature ATI Avivo HD technology with advanced audio, video processing, display and connectivity capabilities for high definition entertainment solutions.
• The ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series is designed to decode and playback Blu-ray and HD DVD formats using dedicated hardware within the GPU.
• The ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series GPU further enhances the HD entertainment experience by making it easy to make the connection to a big- screen or home theater system
• ATI Radeon HD 3800 series GPUs offer full support for the new DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 API (Application Program Interface) from Microsoft

Customer Reviews:

ATI AGP Delight [Posted on 2008-06-11]
The ATI HD 3850 AGP edition is one of the most powerful cards available for motherboards that use the AGP slot, while I have always been an Nvidia fan (3DFX before converting to Nvidia) I must state that this has been one of the smartest marketing decisions by ATI and its alliance companies (HIS, Powercolor etc.) because most motherboards that utilize AGP would mostly be running previous generation CPU's. This card is the logical choice for people who are looking for a temporary upgrade of their older computers in order to be able to enjoy current games and then some more.

This card has a built in Blu ray decoder that allows full Blu ray playback taking the stress of your CPU as well as built in hardware physics abilities that allows you to experience special real time physics in games such as Unreal 3 which it easily handles at max detail.

The card features 320 stream units combined with the core clock and memmory speed it makes it effectively a comparable card to the Nvidia series 8 8600gt/8800gs cards.

This card also runs very cool and has some serious overclocking ability because of this. However if you have a single core processor or slower dual core/first gen dual core processor dont bother as your CPU will most likely be the bottleneck in regards to performance.

Also before upgrading from a previous generation Nvidia or ATI card ensure you have acceptable power as the recommended 450w psu frankly doesnt tell the whole truth you should have at least a PSU with dual 12v rails that pump 18amps, my 550w PSU with 1 12v rail rated at 18amps was not enough.

The only problem with the AGP version of this card is the lack of driver support from ATI which at the time of this review has nothing about the AGP version of this card on their main website.

This card is a true powerhouse for any AGP system and is an excellent upgrade opportunity however if you have the required spare cash then go for a complete system upgrade as you will get more performance from that route. 4/5 due to lack of proper driver support.

Hooray for the HD3850 AGP! [Posted on 2008-07-30]
Last week I made a decision to buy the HIS HD 3850 AGP video card to upgrade the sluggish performance of my old AGP NVIDIA 7800 GS video card. Since NVIDIA abandoned the AGP crowd this card is now the undisputed king of the hill. The card arrived securely packaged with 2 vga to dvi connectors, the install disk, a molinex to 6 pin power cable adapter, and a slip of paper for instructions. The card actually has an 8 pin power connector but not to worry because the 6 pin adaper works fine and can only fit into the card one way. Installation of the card was a snap. The first thing I did was to removed my NVIDIA drivers. Next, carefully remove your old card and insert the HD3850. Connect the power cable and boot up your computer. If you don't see smoke, congratulations you installed it correctly! You might see a message from Windows asking if it can search for drivers. Ignore that message and put the drivers install disk that came with your card into the CD drive. When the install screen comes up select install drivers and let the set up program do its thing. After the installation is complete and you reboot your comkputer you will probably find that you have no sound. Don't be alarmed. This is because the HD3850 card drivers are trying to use the HDMI output from the card for your BIG LCD TV. If you want to continue to use your frumpy small LCD monitor simply go into the Windows XP device manager and disable the selection for HD audio output. Your sound will now be working again. I'm using this card with an older Pentium D 3 Gig CPU and I have seen a doubling of my frame rates in most of the graphics intensive games that I play. If you are still nursing an old but faithful AGP computer you will absolutely love the performace of this card! So I say Hooray for HIS and the HD3850, you have made my computer very happy indeed.

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