2X AGP Card?

ronopp

Senior member
Dec 2, 2002
291
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I have a 2X agp slot and want to put a better card in it. Now I am running a TnT2 M64. What is the best card I can put into this system?

Thanks
 

ronopp

Senior member
Dec 2, 2002
291
14
81
AMD Slot A thunderbird 700Mh w/384 pc100 ram. I am getting my new Gamming system next week and want to give this rig a boost for the Kids so I don't hear any whinning to get on my new toy.:)
 

ronopp

Senior member
Dec 2, 2002
291
14
81
Will there be a performance boost ? Enough to warrent the purchase, or am I destined to having a 35xx 3dMark on this system? Don't like wasteing money for a minimal bump but like I said I want to keep the kids off my system:)

The real Gamer of the Family!!
 

bunker

Lifer
Apr 23, 2001
10,572
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I went from a TNT2 to a GF3 ti200 on my old p3 600 and it worked great with quite a bump in performance. I don't have it any more so I can't run the benchmarks for you though.
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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TNT2-M64 is a performance crippled TNT2. Moving on, to something like a Radeon 9000, gives a massive boost in performance. Higher makes no sense, since you haven't got a fast enough CPU to feed the really powerful cards. Furthermore, R9000 has low enough power consumption to be safe on that old board, and with the power supply unit you already have there.
 

RickH

Senior member
Aug 5, 2000
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Forget the current, what about the voltage. The old motherboards boards supplied 3.3 volts to the slot, the new boards are only1.5 volts. R
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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Common misconception. Signalling voltage has gone down from 3.3V to 1.5V in 4x and then to 0.8V in 8x. The SUPPLY voltage still is 3.3V.
"Universal" AGP cards (that still support 1x/2x) must auto-adjust to the signalling voltage used by the mainboard.
 

kurt454

Senior member
May 30, 2001
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Originally posted by: Peter
Common misconception. Signalling voltage has gone down from 3.3V to 1.5V in 4x and then to 0.8V in 8x. The SUPPLY voltage still is 3.3V.
"Universal" AGP cards (that still support 1x/2x) must auto-adjust to the signalling voltage used by the mainboard.
What about the opposite? I have a 2X agp card (Sis 6326). I have heard that they can burn up the motherboard agp slot in newer Intel boards. Any truth to this?
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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Well yes ... normally, 1.5V-only and 3.3V-only AGP slots should have a mechanical key that prevents you from inserting cards that don't have a matching notch. (see below link, down at the drawings, case B)

However, there have been a few 3.3V-only cards that were notched "universal" (having both notches - ATi managed to screw up once for example, as documented on that very page), and there are plenty i845 series boards that have a "universal" keyed AGP slot (no key) although this chipset series is definitely 1.5V-only. This would then be a hardware implementation bug, quite clearly.

http://mirror.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html
 

bunnyfubbles

Lifer
Sep 3, 2001
12,248
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The GeForce 3 debuted when 1 GHz CPUs were king. 700 MHz is definately enough for a GF3, you will most definately see improved performance over any TNT. Don't forget that the TNT line, GF 256 and the GF2 debuted when CPUs weren't as "fast" as 700MHz.
 

Kazuo

Member
Oct 14, 2002
145
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Geez. I saw a boost on my 440LX (Asus P2L97) with 300MHz P2 when I went from an 8MB TNT2 to a GeForce2MX 400. And we're not talking about a weak boost. I mean UT going from about 20fps to closer to 50.