Dell 4300 512mg Badly need to upgrade my sons box from factory NV11. The board supports only AGP 4X. I don't see much out there in 4X. Would going with PCI be preferable? Will the 8X cards step down to 4X, or is it a waste of money?
depends on what the voltage the 8x card uses compared to the agp slot voltage on motherboard that might be 1.5volts. check manual for agp voltage on motherboard
Assuming the voltage is adequate, is the AGP preferrable to a PCI card for the same money? For example a GF FX5200/256 will function in a 4x or an 8x slot, but is it a waste of capacity?
pci runs at 33mhz & each x on agp is 66mhz so that a 4x 66mhz is 256mhz compared to 33mhz for pci so what do you think is better
85% of the cards out there that say 8X will work on its little brothers (2X 4X) just it cant run at the specs they say on the box. Because it creates some what of a bottleneck. But the FX5200 should be a nice upgrade. I have a FX5700 LE on one of my systems and im only running on a 4X slot. Works great for me.
Thanks. I think I get the concept now: As long as the voltage is adequate, go with the better AGP card. The whole box will be replaced shortly, so I'll go with a better card that I can use in a new machine. Again, thanks. Video has never been something I got concerned about and the more I read the more confused I got.
Try new egg or price watch and as far as the video card is concerened you can get a 5700 there for cheap agp of corse most cards are backwords compatable with agp4 and agp 8
