Hey guys, my dad got me a Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3850 AGP card for my PC because I still have an AGP PC and just wanted to give it a little boost. Installed the card in Windows XP and it works a treat, I played Red Alert 3 on Max settings and it runs really smoothly.

However I downloaded the Windows 7 BETA and it just won't work properly, from what I understand everything that worked in Vista works in 7 (more or less anyway) so it should be working fine. Initially I let Windows automatically get a driver from the internet but that didn't work, I tried the driver on the disc that came with the card, still nothing, I even downloaded the driver hotfix (apparently there were a few problems with the card when first released) from the Sapphire website, but I still get the same messege.

I get a messege from Catalyst Control Center telling me the card isn't installed properly, anyone know what's going on? And yeah, I know it could just be Windows 7... it is a BETA after all.

Here's a shot of the messege if anyone wants to see it.

It's a beta. If it works, great. If it doesn't, that's why it's for testing only at this point.
Make sure you're using the AGP specific drivers though (get them off the website, NOT the disc) and if there are Vista-specific drivers use those.

My suggestion . Fuck Windows 7

"My suggestion . Fuck Windows 7"

"It's a beta. If it works, great. If it doesn't, that's why it's for testing only at this point.
Make sure you're using the AGP specific drivers though (get them off the website, NOT the disc) and if there are Vista-specific drivers use those."

"TheJadeAngel said:

"My suggestion . Fuck Windows 7"

I have yet to hear a negative thing about it, this is one of the first issues I have heard...The general response has been very good."

I would give up on getting the AGP card to work better as getting decent drivers for vista is a nightmare. You could try these hotfix drivers though http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=99286

Thanks for the link, but I already made sure I got the most up to date hotfix drivers.

It looks like although my PSU is powerful enough, it's not sending quite enough of that power to the graphics card (I know I said it's working in XP, but it's having some problems and I don't think it's getting the 3D Mark scores it should be), I'll see if I can get a PSU that will do it right without having to spend too much, they can be pretty expensive.

Did you get this to work?

"Did you get this to work?"

Hi Newton-I'm new here. I was just surfing for a install threads for the AGP 9850 HD. I just installed mine last week and like you said, it works great in XP, but when I ran the Vista upgrade advisor it says that Vista will not work with this card. This is real confusing because some peole are able to install it with Vista and some are not. I was ready to buy Vista but don't know if it would work and now it looks like Win. 7 may have the same problem. WTF? This card is starting to piss me off. It claims to be Vista ready but is it? The drivers that come with the card are useless. You can just throw that disk away as it won't work and neither will the ones at ATI-only the Sapphire. This driver issue is another glitch that they need to fixed so it can be installed in Win 7 when it comes out. The graphics do look good but still not able to run Crysis at anything but the lowest setting. I have AMD 64-3500-W/1GIG RAM.-adding more next week to boost the card. Ithink, for now, XP is the only one that it will work with for sure.

I have sent you a private message giving you the obvious solution to this problem of yours. I said obvious because it's really simple, and people would laugh at me if I said it without any warning.
 
I forgot to say you probabily won't need to deal with AGP drivers for your mobo's chipset. Those drivers are provided by Microsoft itself and most drivers provided by the manufacturers of most common chipsets are out-to-date. I used my HD3850 with both VIA and Intel chipsets, none of them required me to alter deffault Windows drivers, quite the opposite, on VIA chipset and Windows Vista or 7, if I forced system to load manufaturer's drivers I'd get a Blue Screen Of Death at system boot.
 
Anyway, the solution is: simply download and install drivers provided by ATI at their download center as if you had a PCI-E card, considering you have a Sapphire card. For the guys with a PowerColor HD3850, it might be necessary to consider the AGP hotfix.
 
Make sure you've completely uninstalled ANY ATI drivers before installing any new stuff, ok?!
 
Sorry for the mistakes, I'm Brazillian and all I know about English is 'cause of Michael Jackson - yes, I'm a fan.
 
May God bless you all.
 
Hugs,
 
Paulo Henrique de Medeiros.