i just found the sweet spot for my powercolor hd3850 agp,i had to set it to 4x in smartgart
but in the bios i changed the hex number in the agp strength to c2 and now it runs stable
in 8x and a merry christmas to me

.my chipset is a via kt800.Hopefully that hex number will work for others if not it shows that you can fix the problem with that example.when i let the
bios figure it i got 9b.