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Geek Culture / Screwed over by ATI & Sapphire on the HD3850

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GatorHex
19
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Joined: 5th Apr 2005
Location: Gunchester, UK
Posted: 9th May 2008 18:21
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I've always been an Nvidia fan but thought I'd give ATI a go...

Based on reviews of fair speed, low power consumption, low tempratures and inaudable fan noise I purchased 3x Sapphire ATI HD3850 256Mb

2 are inaudible but overheat and stutter after 20mins of BF2142

1 is noisy but works fine

ATI/Sapphire support consists of "you must need a better power supply". Unofficial community support consists of ripping the BIOS from the noisy one to the quiet ones and making them noisy too.

1) Why don't ATI release an official fix for the issue.

2) How can so many reviews not have spotted this!!!

If anyone knows how I can rip them on Vista without a boot floppy then let me know.

I'm not happy, and probably would never buy another ATI card again. In the past they have been buggy and i see nothing much has changed



DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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Chenak
22
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Joined: 13th Sep 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 9th May 2008 19:39
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I've always hated ATI, they buy their cooling components from a car boot sale in Romford.

I've had 5 ATI cards, 1 died the day I bought it due to overheating, 2nd died after 1 month overheating again, the next just didn't work at all, the 4th produced a green screen and the last one seems to work but performs like geforceFX 5200. Tech support was less than useless as always but I guess it is the same with everything else.

Its a real shame they are part of or owned by AMD now, means I cant get SLI on a AM2+ motherboard. There is no way I'm touching ATI again, and now I guess I'm going to have to boycott AMD.

Anyway that was just my personal experience, I gave them a shot and it didn't work out so I'm sticking with geforce, have had no problems so far..
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bitJericho
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Joined: 9th Oct 2002
Location: United States
Posted: 9th May 2008 19:42
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Quote: "Its a real shame they are part of or owned by AMD now, means I cant get SLI on a AM2+ motherboard. There is no way I'm touching ATI again, and now I guess I'm going to have to boycott AMD."


Of course, on the plus side hopefully quality control will pick up


Hurray for teh logd!
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GatorHex
19
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Location: Gunchester, UK
Posted: 9th May 2008 19:45
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I can tell they are trying quality control because some numpty took a beautiful graphics card and perminent marker and scrawled graffiti on all the capacitors!

Luckly i only paid £65 each for them i'd be well mad if i parted the retail price for them.

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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CattleRustler
Retired Moderator
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Location: case modding at overclock.net
Posted: 9th May 2008 19:56 Edited at: 9th May 2008 19:56
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I use nvidia cards but in this instance I might sound like I am taking ATI's side by asking: what type of case cooling do you have where its assumed that 3 video cards in one case are going to run cool? In fact, post pictures of your case innards and lets see.

[href]mod2software[/href]
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GatorHex
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Posted: 9th May 2008 20:06 Edited at: 9th May 2008 20:13
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Various cases and cooling, there is good airflow they were previously running Nvidia 8600GTS fanless models without issue.

It looks like an ATI screw up on their reference design to me.

Their solution on later models is to make the fan run faster but i think they've over done it as the card that works is psycho one second running slow and quiet then revs up fast then goes back to quite again while on idle not playing a game. This is worse than a constant steady hum.

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 9th May 2008 20:27
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I once considered purchasing an ATI card, but after I read the reviews I decided against it, even though the price was un-beatable. It sounds like I made the right choice, lol.


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Chenak
22
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Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 9th May 2008 20:35 Edited at: 9th May 2008 20:39
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3 of them were fitted for my brothers computers so I can't really show them, I think they binned the computers and bought dells... urgg.

Anyway here is my one if you wanna see it, its really rough at the moment because my power supply died so the one I have is a cheap replacement. I've also taken out the fan recently, my sound and phyx card because the power supply can't handle it. There are a couple of fans attached to the case cover.



The graphics card I have now is a geforce 7950GT silent edition which is not overclocked , my processor is an AMD dual core 4200. The temperature at the moment is around 40, around 50 to 58 while playing Crysis.

The card I bought myself I think was a X1650 pro, but their naming system is so wierd I could be wrong. I don't remember recording the temperature so it could be a card fault rather than overheating but basically it produced artifacts, turned green, then started smoking and my PC turned off. It was offically dead and I managed to get a replacement... which didn't work at all so I ended up getting the card I have now.

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El Goorf
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Posted: 9th May 2008 21:45
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i have a HD3850 in my machine and i love it

i had an issue with artifacts when i first got it, so i got a better cooler for it and now it's fine, and i was planning on buying this new cooler eventually anyway because of it being fanless (though i didnt have any issues with the original cooler, it was fairly quiet)..

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bitJericho
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Posted: 9th May 2008 21:57
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Quote: "I can tell they are trying quality control because some numpty took a beautiful graphics card and perminent marker and scrawled graffiti on all the capacitors!"


You were seriously upset about graffiti on your capacitors?? :S

I'd be happy that someone looked over each capacitor on my video card


Hurray for teh logd!
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GatorHex
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Posted: 10th May 2008 02:05
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They could have used a UV marker and a UV light instead though

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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Mr Makealotofsmoke
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Location: BillTown (Well Aust)
Posted: 10th May 2008 03:01
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i dont like ATI because i had a similar issue to this.

I purchased a X800 ages ago. Good card and fairly cheap at the time. When i got it i got blocks all over the screen when playing games like quake4. After looking around i though it could be a heat issue. I got a temp monitor program and ati tool to put GFX card on strain. Turns out it got to 120c and the max for the card was 100c. I took it back and got a new 1. Same issue, so i got a 6600GT.


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mm0zct
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Location: scotland-uk
Posted: 12th May 2008 19:58 Edited at: 12th May 2008 20:06
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iirc the first batch of 3850s had a fan controller bug that meant the fan didn't rev up when the card got hot, atitool or a similar utility can solve this by letting you turn the fan up manually.

i've had no issues with my 3850 whatsoever (except powercolor used crap glue on the sticker and it peeled off when the card got warm and rolled itself up lol) so looks like you got part of the bad batch.

"I think they binned the computers and bought dells... urgg. " please don't tell be they binned the 3850s in this day and age of ebay too.

Chenak: AMD are still letting nvidia produce chipsets for their processors so am2+ sli probably isn't that far away and there are plenty sli am2 boards (which are supposed to be phenom compatible too)

AMD athlon 64 3000+, 1GB ddr400, 720GB total hdd, ati radeon X1900gt 256mb (pci-e) 17" tft(@1280x1024).
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GatorHex
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Posted: 12th May 2008 20:38 Edited at: 12th May 2008 21:17
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Problem solved!!

Forget needing a 512Mb model, forget needing an aproved PSU (some of the responses I had from their sites)...

2 ran quiet (PN 102-B34003-00-AT), but on some games like BF2142 they were running at 93 degrees and suffering lags and corruption unless I dragged down the screen resolution below what I had on my previous 8600GTS

The other one ran noisy (PN 102-B34003-01-AT), which annoyed me initially but had no lag problems with all settings on high.

I used CPU-Z to get the temprature & fan readings and WinATIflash to take the BIOS from the 01 model to the 00 model and guess what all 3 cards now work flawlessly (although I have fan noise when game playing)!

Even though the BIOS versions look to have the same numbers and file size there has obviously been an alteration made regarding fan speeds. I think I read somwhere there was a typo was mad ein the BIOS where a comma had been used instead of a full stop. I wonder how many GPUs they burned?

00 ran at 93 degrees, 01 runs at 73 degrees a whole 20 degrees cooler!

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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