Help on agp slot

**gravedigger** · Server Admin Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 65

I currently have a asusP4B533 motherboard and in the user guide it has a agp 4x 1.5volt slot. I was looking at the FX5900se force graphics card and in the specs it says you need a compliant motherboard with a agp2x slot. Will I still be able to use this card with my currrent motherboard?

Ten · Registered User Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 636

Yes, all GPU's are backward compatible like that. You can run a 8x AGP GPU in a 4x AGP slot, but it'll only receive half the memory bandwidth. More or less a bottleneck.

But I think 2x is just the requirement for the 5900, I'm led to believe that it's meant to be used in a 8x AGP slot in order to acheive full bandwidth.

**gravedigger** · Server Admin Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 65

Thank you for answering my question.

BitterBeerFace · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 10:28 pm Post subject:

Uh... not entirely backwards compatible. AGP 1x has a different voltage than the others. Also, most performance benchmarks show very little if any improvement from AGP 4x to 8x... it can't hurt, but it probably won't show much difference, either.
You'll be fine with a 4x card requiring a 2x slot... that just means it have to be 1.5v compatible, which your mobo has. If you tried to put a 1.5v or .8v AGP card into a 1x slot, it just won't fit... the newer cards have 2 "cuts" in the AGP connector instead of just 1.

Ten · Registered User Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 636

So it really doesn't make that much of a difference?

I'm considering buying a new mobo (which supports 8x, mine only supports 4x) because I'll be getting a 9800 Pro this summer - which is 8x AGP. But if I do get a new mobo, I'll need new RAM, new heat sink and possibly a power supply. Boo.

So is the difference that negligable where I wouldn't necessarily need to upgrade?

Bright Red Nipples · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 11:43 am Post subject:

Depends on what you have now. I have the 9800Pro with a new MB that supports 8x I believe and I don't notice that big a difference in the graphics over my old machine, which the 9800 was in. If you would be spending the money just to improve your graphics then I would say it is a waste. If you have a 900MHZ comp now then I would say go ahead and upgrade.
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God Bless You Blue Ruler

Ten · Registered User Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 636

Well, it's all to get ready for Half-Life 2. I'll be upgrading my Athlon 1700 XP to a 2500 Barton, GeForce3 Ti200 to a Radeon 9800.

I just fear that my mobo will be the weak link. I've got 512 MB of SD RAM although the mobo does have slots for DDR, I've never been able to figure out how to switch the system over to reading the DDR slots instead of the SD slots. So needless to say, my RAM is of different frequencies (or whatever) and isn't necessarily top notch.

But is it really worth it to go with the mobo? I'll need to get a heat sink, new RAM and a new power supply perhaps.

Gamepro65 · Registered User Joined: 02 Dec 2001 Posts: 710

SD ram and DDR Ram are 2 different things. They are shaped differently. When you change over mother boards, you might find your self reformatting. Well atleast thats what happnd to me last year when i upgraded. It just wouldnt fire up because the old settings were for my other mobo and processor. So you might be needing to find an install disk if you do.
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Ten · Registered User Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 636

Right, but there's two slots for SDRAM and two slots for DDR RAM in my mobo. I couldn't just remove the existing SD and throw a new stick of DDR because there was either a physical switch or some kind of BIOS setting that I wasn't aware of how to switch it over.

Bright Red Nipples · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:07 pm Post subject:

These are the specs for the machine I just built:

ANTEC Life Style Series Black Case With "TRUE480W" Power Supply
ASUS 865PE Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU, Model "P4P800 Deluxe"
Intel Pentium 4/ 3.0C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512KB L2 Cache, Hyper Threading Technology
Kingston HyperX Series Dual Kits 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200
ATI Radeon 9800Pro Graphics Card
Envision 19" LCD Flat Monitor
Panasonic Black 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive
Lite-On Black 16X DVD-ROM Drive, 48X CD-ROM
Lite-On Black DVD-Dual Drive Burner
(2) Antec 120mm Blue LED Case fan
Plantronics DSP500 Stereo Headset
Microsoft Office Keyboard
Logitech MX500 Optical Mouse
Western Digital 120GB SE 7200RPM w/8MB Cache HD

Everything in white is what I had to purchase. Everything in red I already owned. For everything in white you are looking at around $1200 or so. I will gaurantee it will be much faster then what you have now. But graphics won't be that tremendous of an improvement. The difference may be easier to notice in a little bit when the new games come out and you notice your system working harder to get stuff going.
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God Bless You Blue Ruler