VisOne
25th March 2008, 07:35 PM
I've being talking to my brother today and I'm looking for a stop gap video card it has to be AGP and worth having my only real current selection is the Radeon card below. Since I cannot for the life of me find a decent AGP card instock in Brisbane anyway I though I might ask the geeker members what they think.
PowerColour ATI Radeon HD3850 512M DDR3 2DH AGP (http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.pht ml?id=10&id2=6&bid=2&sid=29174)
Internet Price: $295.00
Product Details
Product Name: PowerColour ATI Radeon HD3850 512M DDR3 2DH AGP
Warranty: 12 mths
Manufactures: Power colour
Weight(kg): 0
Product link:
Product Description:
* 666 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
* 256-bit GDDR3/GDDR4 memory interface
* Ring Bus Memory Controller
o Fully distributed design with 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads and writes
+ Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
* Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
o Shader Model 4.1
o 32-bit floating point texture filtering
o Indexed cube map arrays
o Independent blend modes per render target
o Pixel coverage sample masking
o Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders
o Gather4 texture fetching
* Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
o 320 stream processing units
+ Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
+ Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders
+ Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
o 128-bit floating point precision for all operations
o Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
o Shader instruction and constant caches
o Up to 80 texture fetches per clock cycle
o Up to 128 textures per pixel
o Fully associative multi-level texture cache design
o DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
o High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
o Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs
o Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
o Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear
o Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1)
o Lossless color compression (up to 8:1)
o 8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support
o Physics processing support
* Anti-aliasing features
o Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)
o Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
o Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
o Temporal anti-aliasing
o Gamma correct
o Super AA (ATI CrossFire™ configurations only)
o All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering
* Dynamic Geometry Acceleration
o High performance vertex cache
o Programmable tessellation unit
o Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
o Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance
* Texture filtering features
o 2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel)
o 128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
o Bicubic filtering
o sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
o Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)
o Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support
o Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support
* OpenGL 2.0 support
* ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform
o Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats
+ High definition (HD) playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats
o Hardware MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX video decode acceleration
+ Motion compensation and IDCT
o ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
+ Color space conversion
+ Chroma subsampling format conversion
+ Horizontal and vertical scaling
+ Gamma correction
+ Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
+ De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
+ Detail enhancement
+ Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
+ Bad edit correction
o Two independent display controllers
+ Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
+ Full 30-bit display processing
+ Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
+ Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
+ High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
+ Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
+ Fast, glitch-free mode switching
+ Hardware cursor
o Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
+ Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)2
+ Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content3
o Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs
+ Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x15362
o Integrated AMD Xilleon™ HDTV encoder
+ Provides high quality analog TV output (component/S-video/composite)
+ Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions
+ Underscan and overscan compensation
o MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding
o Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
o VGA mode support on all display outputs
* ATI PowerPlay™
o Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings
o Performance-on-Demand
+ Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario
+ Clock and memory speed throttling
+ Voltage switching
+ Dynamic clock gating
o Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required
1 Dual channel interconnect is not required for ATI CrossFire, and may not be included in all product configurations
2 Some custom resolutions require user configuration
3 HDCP support for playback of protected content requires connection to a HDCP capable display
The only real down point of this card for me is its a Radeon I have never had one before, what is the major difference between them and Nvidia ? Will I be able to simple plug & play with this of course I will need to get drivers and what not but I won't need to reformat or anything will I ? The other thing if someone can find me a good Nvidia card thats for sale in the inner city of Brisbane then send me a link my way I am interested other wide I'm off to but this tomorrow.
PowerColour ATI Radeon HD3850 512M DDR3 2DH AGP (http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.pht ml?id=10&id2=6&bid=2&sid=29174)
Internet Price: $295.00
Product Details
Product Name: PowerColour ATI Radeon HD3850 512M DDR3 2DH AGP
Warranty: 12 mths
Manufactures: Power colour
Weight(kg): 0
Product link:
Product Description:
* 666 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
* 256-bit GDDR3/GDDR4 memory interface
* Ring Bus Memory Controller
o Fully distributed design with 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads and writes
+ Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
* Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
o Shader Model 4.1
o 32-bit floating point texture filtering
o Indexed cube map arrays
o Independent blend modes per render target
o Pixel coverage sample masking
o Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders
o Gather4 texture fetching
* Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
o 320 stream processing units
+ Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
+ Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders
+ Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
o 128-bit floating point precision for all operations
o Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
o Shader instruction and constant caches
o Up to 80 texture fetches per clock cycle
o Up to 128 textures per pixel
o Fully associative multi-level texture cache design
o DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
o High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
o Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs
o Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
o Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear
o Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1)
o Lossless color compression (up to 8:1)
o 8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support
o Physics processing support
* Anti-aliasing features
o Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)
o Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
o Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
o Temporal anti-aliasing
o Gamma correct
o Super AA (ATI CrossFire™ configurations only)
o All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering
* Dynamic Geometry Acceleration
o High performance vertex cache
o Programmable tessellation unit
o Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
o Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance
* Texture filtering features
o 2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel)
o 128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
o Bicubic filtering
o sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
o Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)
o Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support
o Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support
* OpenGL 2.0 support
* ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform
o Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats
+ High definition (HD) playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats
o Hardware MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX video decode acceleration
+ Motion compensation and IDCT
o ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
+ Color space conversion
+ Chroma subsampling format conversion
+ Horizontal and vertical scaling
+ Gamma correction
+ Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
+ De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
+ Detail enhancement
+ Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
+ Bad edit correction
o Two independent display controllers
+ Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
+ Full 30-bit display processing
+ Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
+ Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
+ High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
+ Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
+ Fast, glitch-free mode switching
+ Hardware cursor
o Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
+ Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)2
+ Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content3
o Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs
+ Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x15362
o Integrated AMD Xilleon™ HDTV encoder
+ Provides high quality analog TV output (component/S-video/composite)
+ Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions
+ Underscan and overscan compensation
o MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding
o Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
o VGA mode support on all display outputs
* ATI PowerPlay™
o Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings
o Performance-on-Demand
+ Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario
+ Clock and memory speed throttling
+ Voltage switching
+ Dynamic clock gating
o Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required
1 Dual channel interconnect is not required for ATI CrossFire, and may not be included in all product configurations
2 Some custom resolutions require user configuration
3 HDCP support for playback of protected content requires connection to a HDCP capable display
The only real down point of this card for me is its a Radeon I have never had one before, what is the major difference between them and Nvidia ? Will I be able to simple plug & play with this of course I will need to get drivers and what not but I won't need to reformat or anything will I ? The other thing if someone can find me a good Nvidia card thats for sale in the inner city of Brisbane then send me a link my way I am interested other wide I'm off to but this tomorrow.