PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 AGP Benchmarked

Fri 2008-04-04 - Posted by Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan

Do you have an old pre-PCI Express system that needs some rejuvenation? Well you will be glad to know that Fudzilla has just tested an AGP version of the PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 graphics card.

Let’s see what they had to say:

“It's obvious that this card is better than the previous AGP king, the X1950 Pro. The question is, does its superior performance justify the higher price? The Powercolor HD 3850 512MB PCS AGP retails at around €150, while the X1950 Pro with 512MB of memory sells for about €130. The price difference can be justified, not only by superior performance, but by DX10.1 support, multimedia capabilities, HDMI and much more.

On the other hand, if you already own a X1950 Pro, the upgrade can't be easily justified. The X1950 Pro is doing a great job against HD 3850, and the price is close. If you have some older card, and you want to refresh you system so you can play some games at a decent resolution, then the HD 3850 is just the card for you. It is the king of the AGP hill.”

It is a joy to see certain companies provide modern upgrade paths for older systems. However, due to various system bottlenecks, the HD 3850 is not significantly faster than the X1950 PRO AGP or GeForce 7950GT AGP. Lastly, in my opinion, it simply doesn’t make sense to buy an upgrade that is worth more than the entire system that it is being installed into.

Click here to read the full article.

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