4x vs 8x AGP??

[Guest bfindlay]

Considering an upgrade to the video card. I am tired of the driver issues, and lack of performance on my Gforce2, and want to try one of the radeon series. My motherboard will only support 4X AGP, so is there any point in getting a card past the 9100 series? All of the higher cards have 8X AGP. Is this performance bottleneck from the MOBO a 'show stopper' - or are there other features of the later cards that make them worthwhile, even though the full AGP multiplier is not available?

[Guest A321]

If you have an 4X AGP Board and you get an 8x AGP card, you wont get a bottle neck as such, your just not using your equipment to it's full ability, thats all. I have had an 8X card running on a 4X board, and i did not have any problems. I think its more important to have the Ram running at as high a bus speed as you can, as this is where most bottle necks are likley to be. however if you can afford a new Board as well go for an 8X one.Hope This helpsJason

[Mac_Paint 35]

I went from a Ti4400 to a Radeon 9700 Pro and I'm thinking of switching back. I ripped off a condenser can from my Ti400 awhile back during a trouble shooting session and replaced it with the 9700. I haven't been totally happy with the Radeon's ability to display fine lines on my repaints as I had been with the Ti4400. Might be a driver issue with the Radeon, so I'm waiting for newer catalyst drivers that may be released within the next month or so or until/if my Ti4400 can be repaired. If your thinking of switching from the GeForce to the ATI based on the drivers, then you might just be switching one set of driver issues for new ones. You might not have any issues switching over to the Radeon series of cards, but you never know. Athlon XP 2800+ BartonTwo 512MB Corsair PC3500 Ram Cards80GB Western Digital Hard DriveMSI K7N Mobo with latest BiosAudigy Soundblaster with latest Beta DriversATI Radeon 9700 Pro with latest Catalyst DriversPeter Sterling

[Guest jmarcure]

Just this last weekend I picked up a GeForce FX Ultra 5200, which has 8x AGP and it works fine in my 4x AGP system. I know I

[Noel 4,499]

The internal bandwidth of upper end Radeons is 10gb/sec and beyond if I recall, so worrying about whether or not your AGP bus has 1.1 (4x) or 2.2 gb/sec (8x) bandwidth is really a moot point if you have enough video ram. It's been a while since I read these specs but in any case you get the drift. It will pretty much all be taken care of via the video card's onboard ram. In fact some even get improved performance with all AGP texture acceleration off, as well as totally disabling the AGPs use of system ram as a texture frame buffer. Try it and see how your system does with AGP off. Mine is fine! And I have an 8x board and Radeon 9700 Pro. My impression is that with on board video with small frame buffers the AGP bus becomes an important factor. I think this is way less so today with add on cards sporting 128mb or more of ram.Noel