[Pc_Support] AGP 4X/8X

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 15:41 -0400, Read, Greg wrote:
> I have an old system, Athlon 1700XP and it has an AGP 4X slot; I'm
> currently using a NVidia GeForce 3 Ti200 in it.
> I bough a new LCD monitor that has a DVI input and I wanted to get a
> cheap NVidia graphics card that has DVI.
> I found one on Buy.com, XFX GeForce 6200 128MB DDR AGP Video Card
> ( DVI TV-Out VGA ) - PVT44ARA it's $28 after rebate.
> The catch is, it says it's AGP 8X, can I use it in my 4X slot?

The NV44 (GeForce 6200) kicks about all pre-NV40 ass -- including the
non-TurboCache (which includes AGP) being 4-6x faster than a NV34
(GeForce FX5200/5500):  
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2006/02/geforce-6-and-7-series-variants-nuts.html

> I've seen similar eVGA cards on Newegg that say they are AGP4X/8X,
> should I go with one of those?

Depends.  On my blog, I listed the AGP 1.0 (1x/2x), 2.0 (2x/4x) and 3.0
(4x/8x) voltages:
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2005/11/agp-agp-pro-pci-and-pci-x-voltage.html

Many newer AGP 3.0, 0.8V cards are _not_ always 1.5V tolerant.  As such,
they do _not_ often work in AGP 2.0 slots that can only do 1.5V (and are
possibly 3.3V tolerant).  This has been a major issue with
compatibility.

To make matters worse, if you buy the card and put it in the slot, you
_could_ blow it and/or the slot.  Typically the problem is when your
older card uses a higher voltage than the newer slot of lower voltage,
and a newer card with lower voltage won't blow the older slow of higher
voltage.

But you never know.  And the mainboard as well as the cards do a _poor_
job of telling you.

I don't know if nVidia did a good job with the NV44 (6200) and 1.5V
tolerance -- let alone if vendors are honoring them.  But I can tell you
that did _not_ do a good job with the NV43 (6600) when it came to 1.5V
tolerance.  They typically _only_ work in AGP 3.0 (4x/8x) slots and
_not_ older AGP 2.0 (2x/4x) slots.



-- 
Bryan J. Smith          Professional, technical annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org    http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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