HD3850 - different prices and models

almichev · 9 May 2008 at 12:41

Hi, I'm shopping around for an HD3850 512mb DDR3 and am coming across various versions of it. Does anyone know if there are any differences between these versions please? OR is it just different companies offering different deals etc.

Thanks.

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 13:07

they are pretty much the same, some vary in clockspeeds a bit and use different coolers...and the warantees may vary.

Cairnsey · 9 May 2008 at 14:53

I'd go for the Powercolour one, 512Mb Pre-OC'ed and the cheapest of the 512Mb versions....

Gurusan - What happened to you crossfire setup? Was thinking about pairing my HD3850 with either another 3850 or a 3870. How did you find it?

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 15:02

i sold the 3870 because it was too much power really....

And crossfiring the 3850 and 3870 worked out pretty well, I clocked my 3850 to 900/2160 and the 3870 to 850 and it really performed well.

almichev · 9 May 2008 at 15:24

Cairnsey said:
I'd go for the Powercolour one, 512Mb Pre-OC'ed and the cheapest of the 512Mb versions....

Gurusan - What happened to you crossfire setup? Was thinking about pairing my HD3850 with either another 3850 or a 3870. How did you find it?

Have found the Club 3D HD3850 Overclocked Edition at a good price. Is ther a vast difference between this and the Powercolour one?

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 15:42

no difference really.... However be warned, this cooler is very loud.

almichev · 9 May 2008 at 16:13

Thank you! That clinches it then, am looking for a quiet system so will look elsewhere.

Cairnsey · 9 May 2008 at 16:37

gurusan said:
i sold the 3870 because it was too much power really....

And crossfiring the 3850 and 3870 worked out pretty well, I clocked my 3850 to 900/2160 and the 3870 to 850 and it really performed well.

Thought Crossfire limited you to the lower GPU clock of the two, or is that SLI?

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 17:11

that's sli.....with crossfire you can have different clockspeeds, texture buffer sizes...etc.

Cairnsey · 9 May 2008 at 17:18

Yeah, of course, otherwise why would people couple their 3850's with 3870's. Stupid me....

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 17:23

yup.

Anyway, back to the OP....the HIS IceQ3 versions are fairly quiet....also powercolor makes a fanless silent one...but unless the airflow is very good in your case I would recommend strapping on a 120mm fan or something..

Or, you could always buy an Accelero S1 cooler, they are very cheap, very good, and fanless

almichev · 9 May 2008 at 17:59

gurusan said:
yup.

Anyway, back to the OP....the HIS IceQ3 versions are fairly quiet....also powercolor makes a fanless silent one...but unless the airflow is very good in your case I would recommend strapping on a 120mm fan or something..

Or, you could always buy an Accelero S1 cooler, they are very cheap, very good, and fanless

Thanks for this. Will do some maths then. Am not a serious gamer so the clincher is that in the future I'll be creating 3D still art aswell as video editing up to HD standard. Have found a passively cooled 3650 512mb ddr3. The 3850 performs better for games but is there much difference between the two for what I'll be doing? The price difference would be around £50 if OCUK get the cooler back in stock.

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 18:01

even if you are a mild gamer, the 3850 is a million times better than the 3650 in games.

Lightnix · 9 May 2008 at 18:43

Well, more like 3 times better, but the point still stands.

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 19:00

i have a habit of exaggerating a bit

almichev · 9 May 2008 at 20:22

gurusan said:
even if you are a mild gamer, the 3850 is a million times better than the 3650 in games.

It doesn't matter for games. But any idea about the other things I mentioned?

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 20:50

Well for video editing and 3d still art there's no difference really between them.

Trunks9486 · 9 May 2008 at 20:54

off topic but...

@gurusan what do you consider a safe 24/7 voltage and clock for the 3850? do the normal voltages rule apply as with the 65nm CPUs? (no more than 1.5v in bios for me at least). I was under the impression that you got your card at 1GHz stable

gurusan · 9 May 2008 at 21:07

my card was 1ghz stable but I didn't run it like that daily. It required 1.6v and water cooling for that to happen, and it was only run like that for a few bench sessions.

So far I haven't heard of anyone burning out their 38xx series from overvolting though, right now I have mine on 1.35v 877mhz....personally I'd be comfortable with 1.5v daily though with good cooling.

1.5V is only about 13% above stock vGPU, so i would think its fine for 24/7 use. Also the powerplay function drops back the voltage a bit under idle.

Trunks9486 · 9 May 2008 at 21:33

does the power play apply to the powerdolor model though?

I know that my fan is constantly on high but i didnt know whether the voltage decreases.

Does the zerotherm cooler meets the requirements for good cooling?