Just bought a HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 Turbo 512mb AGP and as soon as i poped it in, no drivers no nothin my idle CPU usage went to 70 - 100 percent and is staying like that. Ive installed the drivers and no change. Graphics are corrupted too. anyone got any ideas? i got an Athlon64 3000+ on an MSI k8n neo2 platinum MB, 2 gigs kingston, and a 430 watt powertake power supply

Did you clean out all the previous drivers before installing this one? Sounds like a software conflict to me...

I did, i went to add/remove programs and uninstalled nvidia display drivers. And i deleted the Nvidia folder before i installed. HIS tech support sais i have a bad card and they want me to return it but i got the feeeling another card will do the same thing

Well there's 4 things I know of that'll cause graphics corruption; software conflict, weak power supply, overheating or a broken card. The reason I'm thinking it's a software conflict is the CPU usage, is it still jumping to 100%?

Best thing would be to try the card in a different computer, that's the only thing I can think of right now cause if it's not a software issue the card being broken is probably the next likely candidate.

I formated my hard drive and reinstalled windows and its still happening but now instead of idling around 70% - 100% its down to 20% - 50%. I also took a closer look at the box and it recommends a 450 watt psu and mnines 430 so im short 20 watts, do u think that might be whats causing it?

What's the make and model of the power supply? I've never heard of Powertake, did you mean Thermaltake?

The PSU could be too weak, it depends more on the amps available through the 12v rails than the wattage. Though I don't know how that could cause the cpu to idle at 50%...

Your whole computer probably only uses 200W of power at peak. Manufacturers like to say you need a power supply double the size for a few reasons; smaller PSU's might not have enough amps on the 12v rails to run the card (and talking about x amps on 12v rails as a requirement is another level of complexity that would confuse people), PSU's are never 100% efficient (so 450W is really more like 360W) and PSU's deliver more stable power at around 50% of their theoretical maximum.

Do you have another computer you could use to test the card in? Maybe a friend's? I think it's still the best option to narrow this problem down. Better to make sure before you start spending money on new hardware.

Your correct lol its thermaltake pure power 430 watt and i do have another comp with an agp port but the power supply in it is only 200 watts. And my 12+v cord has 18 amps.

Well that explains it I think. 18 amps isn't enough considering that power supply only has a single 12v rail. It's trying to run the processor and the video card from that 18 amps, but it probably wouldn't even be enough to run the video card alone.

So time to do a 180 and recommend getting a new PSU

Ok thats what i was thinking too. I just got an 89 watt AMD athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 ghz in the mail today what kinda amps do u recommend for that and my new radeon?

A dual rail PSU (2 12v lines) with at least 30 amps combined would be best. Most good 500W PSU's will supply at least that much, and I wouldn't get any less than 500W since it's nice to have some headroom for future upgrades.

What about this one it has 2 12v+ lines both at 18 amps and it has all the connectors i need.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] CatId=1483

And how sure are you that this is my problem before i got spend 100 bux lol

That should be fine.

How sure am I? Not very lol. I really don't think that 18 amps is enough to run everything, but I'm not sure it's causing the problem you're having. Maybe someone here can give you a second opinion.

Like I said it still doesn't make sense to me that the cpu usage would spike up like that. If you go into task manager while your CPU is grinding away what process is using it?

I have a total of 24 processes goin, only ones that arent Windows default processes is: Ati2evxx.exe, CCC.exe, and MOM.exe which are all ATI. My idle cpu usage with these 24 processes is now around 30 - 55%. I installed Supreme Commader and tried playing it, the game chokes up every second or so, especially with the cutscenes. In game text is red where it should be blue (firefox and windows is doin this too) and special fx (like explosions and weapon blasts) are all messed up.
I also have another question. The card came with an adapter that takes 2 periphial connectors and has a pci express pin on the other side. I tried using that with the same results. Do the 4 pin periphial connectors (the ones that go to cd drive and ide hard drive) use the 12v+ rail too?

What operating system are you running?
Windows XP 32bit or 64Bit?
Windows Vista 32bit or 64bit?
Linux (DIST) (VERSION) (32Bit or 64Bit)?
Do you have the AGP setting correct in the BIOS?
Did you install the correct gart driver for your chipset?
Is ATi Smart Gart working correctly?
Did you install the GART driver before you installed the ATI drivers?

I'm running Windows XP64Bit and using the Beta Nvidia 64bit GART driver for Dual core cpu's. I'm using an old X1950PRO AGP and in Quake 4 at a resolution of 1024X768 with everything set on High Detail, I'm getting anywhere from 66 to 71 frames a second.
But sometimes when I fire up Quake my frame rates are between 9 and 12 Frames per second due to Nvidia's buggy drivers and I have to reboot the computer in-order to get it working correctly.

It all sounds like you have the wrong GART driver installed or the heatsink/fan on your 3850 is not contacting the GPU and memory.
If the Heatsink/fan is in good contact with your GPU and memory and you do have the correct GART driver installed, then most likely the 3850 is defective.

I didnt found another place to ask so sorry for this

I HAVE A SAPPHIRE HD3850 512MB DDR3, i'm using catalyst 8,5.

The problem is i'm getting 2d graphics performance too low. Specially 2D lines and shapes

About 100% LESS than it should be..

I tested with "performancetest 6.1"

Any tips?? any contact like skype?

Thanks a lot. Sorry for my english.