AGP 8x card in AGP 4x slot?

[caenelgren]

My girlfriend recently purchased an old, not-so-great computer; thankfully, it was at least cheap and much better than her old computer. However, she's getting a lot of hitching and pausing while playing some of her favorite games, such as The Sims 2. I plan on building her a new computer soon, but until then I figured I would at least upgrade what she has. The downside is I am out of the state for school so I can't be there to see exactly what kind of situation she has.

Still, my main question is this: her motherboard states it supports AGP 2x/4x. Does this mean I must buy her a video card made specifically for the AGP 4x spec? I did some research and came away unsure; basically, I've seen sites stating that although an AGP 8x/4x card is required to be able to run at 4x and less speeds, the slots themselves (from AGP 2.0 to AGP 3.0) run at different voltages and whatnot. I've also seen reports from people stating that their AGP 8x/4x rated cards do not work, while their friends' cards will. At that point it almost seems guess and check. Does anyone know what the very best AGP 4x rated is? Or whether or not something newer, such as a Geforce 6600GT or Radeon 9800XT will run in it?

For those interested, this is what my girlfriend picked up for $100:
AMD 1600+ processor
KT266A motherboard (Abit KR7A-133)
Radeon 9000 64 meg AGP 4x/2x
Sound Blaster Audigy 1
SCSI CD Burner (not sure what kind/speed)
40 gig IDE hard drive (not sure of speed)
256 megs of PC2100 ram
Windows XP w/ SP2


I already plan on getting her another 512 megs of ram to start with; also, her case fans are driving her insane because they make really horrible noises, so I'm getting her some cute ones 😉. I'm getting her an IDE DVD burner also so she can get rid of the SCSI (her hard drive is IDE). Anybody have any better ideas?

Really, my main concern is updating her ancient video card. If I limit the search choice to 4x AGP on newegg.com, the best result seems to be a Geforce 4mx, which I know still sucks (and I'm assuming the Mac edition 9800pro wouldn't work in her computer). The next best thing would be what she already has: the Radeon 9000. Does she have any other options?

Thanks for the help!

 

[DannyBoy]

There should be no problem putting an 8x/4x card in there as it should downclock, however putting something like a 9800XT or 6600GT in that machine would just be plain stupid, the rest of the machine will limit the power of the card.

The best thing you could do if you're intent on not upgrading anything other than the RAM would be to pickup a second hand Ti 4200 Pro or 4600, IMHO.

 

[caenelgren]

Thanks for the reply. I did realize that the rig she had just picked up was old and so not going to take full advantage of a newer card; still, I tend to overspend on my girlfriend sometimes (when it comes to tech stuff at least, for what was our shared computer) so I guess it was force of habit. I'd also thought that, since we always have spare parts around, building a new computer and throwing in the 6600GT then may have been fine.

But what you said makes sense; since I'm already planning to build her a brand new computer anyway, a temporary and cheaper solution would be best.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: caenelgren
Thanks for the reply. I did realize that the rig she had just picked up was old and so not going to take full advantage of a newer card; still, I tend to overspend on my girlfriend sometimes (when it comes to tech stuff at least, for what was our shared computer) so I guess it was force of habit. I'd also thought that, since we always have spare parts around, building a new computer and throwing in the 6600GT then may have been fine.

But what you said makes sense; since I'm already planning to build her a brand new computer anyway, a temporary and cheaper solution would be best.

Thanks for the advice!

Yeah the performance you're going to get from that 9000 won't be far off anything else you fling in it, best just to hold out till you build a new rig 🙂

 

[jackschmittusa]

First of all, let me say I think she got quite a deal for 100 bucks. Second, I see no reason why that rig won't play games like The Sims. More ram may be the only thing you need. There may be some setup or configuration problems with it now that is hampering it. I'm on my "pieces/parts" rig in my basement (where I can smoke) which contains an Athlon 900 (200m fsb), 512 pc100, and, until recently, a Radeon 9000 pro /128 4x agp. I have run the demos of such games as Call of Duty and Painkiller on it without any problems. I can't run with all of the settings maxed out of course, but they look pretty good at playable framerates. I'm sure it could run The Sims just fine too.

 

[RelaxTheMind]

I used to frequent sims2 forums back when i got it for my girl. sims 2 seems to like nvidia cards better than ATI ones. Not sure if they fixed the driver issue. People with x800s were still getting choppy performance. My old ti4400 runs it fine and dandy. Shes gonna like Sims a lot more when the extra 512mb of ram is in there.

funny thing is that those are almost the exact same specs that my girls computer used to be. except it has a 60gb 7200rpm 8mb maxtor and a cheapo 64mb ati 7000.

how did u get that all for $100? thats a steal

 

[caenelgren]

Actually, yeah, I was impressed myself with what she ended up grabbing for $100. One of our friends down there had actually upgraded his computer and figured it'd be easy enough just passing it off to us for a quick sum rather than trying to get rid of it some other way; thankfully, the rest of the games she plays runs fine. For the most part, it's just Quake 3 and the occassional dabble into something else.

The comments about how similar rigs run today's games are encouraging. I'm sure her system isn't optimized yet either, but that's part of the reason I wish I could be there to do everything for her. She's not that confident when it comes to computers, so I'll do what I can.

Again, thanks for all the replies!

 

[cmdrmoocow]

An AGP 8x card will work just fine in an AGP4x board- the only cards that show a larger than 2% difference are the upper-end X800s.

Linky