Difference between 2x, 4x and 8x AGP?

[Sub51]

I was thinking about getting an 8x AGP mobo for my Radeon 9700 and future use.

Now, how much difference is there between 2x and 4x AGP in terms the frames per seconds in games? Between 4x and 8x?

 

[BoomAM]

practically no difference. even current game, ut2003 included, dont even tax the agp4x bus. go to www.tomshardware.com theres an article on there about agp8x vs agp4x.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

There is a difference in bandwidth capacities, and I'm sure you already figured that each generation thus far is double the previos generations, If you read on in that article at tommies hardware's, you notice that "current" applications and even hardware don't yet make use of the added fill rate capabilities of 8x and in many cases 4x agp. But if you're building a machine from scratch and don't intend on upgrading your mobo within the next 2 years, I'd say go for it, they have better memory controllers and are generally faster mobo's anyway, plus if you purchase any software that will benefit from agp 8x (like DOOM III) you'll be glad you went ahead with the purchase. just my 2 centavos (spanish for pennys).

 

[ScrewFace]

AGP 8x doubles the throughput to 2.1GB/second from AGP 4x's 1.050GB/second. This does give you a coupla fps extra but not much. It only matters if your videocard needs to access textures from your system RAM than AGP 8x can do it twice as fast as AGP 4x. But, with videocards now stock with their own 128MB (and 256MB is coming) of ultra-fast DDR-SDRAM videocards don't need to access main RAM.