Is an 8x AGP card a waste in an AGP 4x slot?

[River Side]

I was thinking of replacing my 7200LE just for kicks and wanted to know if there was a theoretial limit past which putting an 8x card in my 4x AGP slot wouldn't make a difference.. I don't want to burn extra money for an 8x card if it would be limited by the AGP 4x slot it goes in.

so the question is.. which card would fit best in my 4x AGP slot beyond which the card exceeds the AGP 4x capabilities.. so I know a ceiling and look out for cards below that ..

 

[LW07]

Originally posted by: River Side
I was thinking of replacing my 7200LE just for kicks and wanted to know if there was a theoretial limit past which putting an 8x card in my 4x AGP slot wouldn't make a difference.. I don't want to burn extra money for an 8x card if it would be limited by the AGP 4x slot it goes in.

so the question is.. which card would fit best in my 4x AGP slot beyond which the card exceeds the AGP 4x capabilities.. so I know a ceiling and look out for cards below that ..

The performance difference won't be noticable at all. It'd be like .01 or so FPS difference at the most.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102002
This would be a good upgrade, though.

 

[Maxspeed996]

you won't notice a difference for the most part , you will however , if you are getting an 8x card have to look at the slot voltage to make sure that the 8x card will operate at the 4x slot's voltage. That's the only thing that I can think of to tell you. Don't quote me , but I think the difference's are 1.4v/3.6v something like that. you'll need an 8x card that will run at the lower voltage. It'll be listed in it's specs if it's 8x/4x compatible. So just do a bit o readin!! That is the only capability difference that I know of.....the 4x slot not able to operate at high enough voltage to make an 8x card work.
Good luck!

 

[Job]

AGP x4 has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 1GB/s compared to 2GB/s on x8. You probably wont wanna go any higher than a ATI 9800pro at a guess, although you might get away with a Geforce 6600GT - you will prob have to game at lower res tho

 

[Maxspeed996]

Originally posted by: Job
AGP x4 has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 1GB/s compared to 2GB/s on x8. You probably wont wanna go any higher than a ATI 9800pro at a guess, although you might get away with a Geforce 6600GT - you will prob have to game at lower res tho

I don't think the bandwidth will matter at all. My 7800gs co superclock isn't able to saturate the bus on 8x. I doubt any of those cards will fill up a 4x slots available bandwidth. I know back in the day when I was running my first build , with a 4x slot. I got the x700pro agp card. Which was a 4x/8x card. that would run at the lower voltage that the 4x slot provided. You can't just take any ol' 8x card and throw it in a 4x slot. there are some cards that won't be backwards compatible because they aren't designed to operate at the lower voltage. Like I said , just check it out , and if you find a card that is advertised as 4x/8x , you are probably good to go as long as your powersupply meets the minimum requirements to run it.
Example , some higher end AGP cards require a minimum of 350 watt powersupply to run. and a 4-pin molex connector to plug it into the card. (like your 3.5 floppy drive uses)

 

[Wreckage]

Your CPU will be more of a bottleneck than your AGP port. You may be better off just getting a used 6800.

However this is a nice card that should give you a boost.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130036

 

[River Side]

Thanks for the responses.. so it appears I don't have to worry about putting in 'more of a video' card in my 'lesser of the AGP' port..

and hey i wasn't looking to burn >$40 on this 'upgrade'.. I only wanted to know what to look out for and i know now the answer is to get something that also carries the AGP 4x spec in addition to 8x.. I was eyeing the oft repeating at Fry's, PNY Geforce 6200 special for $30 ... i may jump on it then.. but after reading this thread and not seeing a 4x marking on it. I may not.

 

[Peter]

8x and 4x gear are mutually compatible, always. They have to, by the rules of the AGP standard. The signalling voltage is the same (1.5V), only the voltage /swing/ is reduced to .8V in 8x mode.

Performance delta, while measurable in benchmarks, is nonexistant in actual applications and games - simply because with the large amounts of memory on graphics cards we have now, AGP transfers (borrowing system memory when the GPU runs short on its own) hardly ever actually happen.