Following up from my HD 3870 video — this time I picked up an untested HD 3850 from 2007 for $9.90. Cleaned it, repasted it and threw it at 6 games on a Core 2 Duo rig.
• GTA San Andreas
• CoD4 Modern Warfare
• Tomb Raider Underworld
• Just Cause 2
• NFS Most Wanted
• Crysis
Temps hit 106°C but it survived.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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For $10, that's quite impressive. I'm familiar with several of those games, including Just Cause 2, which I have run on i7-4785t (iGPU only) at 630p, hitting 69fps (albeit it AA off etc, AF 4x, textures high, shadows low, medium water and object details etc).
OTOH, the i7-4785T doesn't hit 90+ degrees to do it :) (sits around 70) and sips ~40W.
EDIT: from the video, the test rig was -
Test Bench Specs:
Haha yeah the temps were wild! The i5-4785T is way more power efficient. The whole point here was to see if this ancient dedicated GPU could still hold up — and somehow it did despite trying to melt itself!