Is there a performance difference between Radeon 9100 PCI and Radeon 9100 AGP???

[RussianSensation]

Hi my friend has a very old computer and his geforce 4200 just died

so i tested my radeon 8500 and because his cpu is so slow (733mhz) it plays games identically (basically chops with anything in high detail at 1024x768)

but he wants to get a new rig later in 8 months; for now he needs a cheap card

so i found this one:

Radeon 9100 128-bit memory (250/250) 64mb for $47

Radeon 9100 PCI 64 mb (250/250 with 128-bit memory not 64-bit) so it shoud be almost as fast as my radeon 8500 275/275, my only concern is that its a pci graphics card and i dont know anything about pci graphics interface will it affect perfomance? or will it work on his intel i815 motherboard in a normal pci slot?


The same card with same specs in AGP format is $55 bucks and in PCI is $47, if its just about a difference in what slot to plug i dont see a point for spending 8 extra bucks on 2 identical cards ( he is on a tight budget)

 

[clicknext]

Please don't post the same topic in two places.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

You're joking, right?

AGP > PCI, hands down.

- M4H

 

[BFG10K]

If he just needs a temporary cheap card then the 9100 PCI will do fine. You might even be able to find a 7500 PCI for around $40 or so which'll save him even more money.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
You're joking, right?

AGP > PCI, hands down.

- M4H

great answer. not sure it applies tho.

with the 9100 (which i know very little about) where is the bottle neck? is it in the GPU? the ram?? if so then the interface PCI Vs AGP really shouldn't make much diff at all.

if it IS at the bus, than obviously the agp is a better solution. i'm not sure how much better tho.

 

[BFG10K]

There's no sense in trying analyse the card - all he needs is a cheap, reasonably performing card to tide him over until he upgrades his rig. Therefore the less he spends now the more he'll be able to spend on a decent card later on.

 

[RussianSensation]

Guys listen I know that AGP is faster than PCI

but AGP 8x gains inegligible improvement (0.1% ?) over AGP 4x if none whatsoever. Now i know cards that Run AGP 4x are faster than 2x, but my question is If my friend gets 5200 3dmarks01 with RAdeon 8500 64mb (275/275) and 6000 marks with GeForce 4 4200 64mb (250/513) then what will be the performance hit against going with this PCI 9100 Radeon vs. AGP radeon if its only 300 points than it doenst matter

Put it this way he just wants to play NBA LIve 2003 at 1024x768 with medium settings

In fact any game above 1024x768 chops for him even on a geforce 4 4200 since he has 133mhz ram and 733 mhz processor on top of the fact that his power supply is 200 watts only

So if the PCI doesnt bottleneck this $47 Radeon 9100 by more than 10% than its fine, there is no point cause i'll just overclock it for him to 275/275 to get those 10% back. But if its more than i'll advise him to spend the extra 8 bucks to get $55 RAdeon 9100 AGP

Thanx for all the replies anyways. The reason why I usually post in 2 sections is to get more responses and I usually get many views which is very helpful.

 

[Pete]

Decent price for a decent card. The main limitation of PCI is that if you use textures larger than your card's memory, you can expect atrocious performance (moreso than with AGP cards). I doubt Live 2003 will present that problem (and the simple solution is to turn texture detail down a notch).

 

[BFG10K]

The main limitation of PCI is that if you use textures larger than your card's memory, you can expect atrocious performance (moreso than with AGP cards).

Actually you'll always see significant performance hits and it starts getting really bad from DirectX 7 titles onwards as they start using T&L and are thus transferring the scene's vertices to the GPU.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Spend the extra 8 bucks more for the agp card. 8 bucks is nothing and the performance difference would be more than 10% I'm sure.

 

[Captante]

Hi... If your buddy has an AGP slot, then go for the AGP card hands down... I realize you know PCI is slower then AGP, but thats not the only issue here... almost every other component on his older motherboard shares the PCI bus, from the hard drive, to the network card to the soundcard & that combined with the fact that PCI is 33mhz shared vs AGP being 66mhz dedicated to only the graphics board, my bet is the PCI card will not only be dog-slow in 3D, but will slow the entire system down in all applications.
Go with an ATI 9100, or better yet a 9100 Pro (higher clocked version) AGP card, either s/b faster then a GeForce 4 MX & although the 9200 seris of cards claims to be DX9 on the box, its so slow, that the DX9 features will be un-usable.... also don't even consider the FX
5200, that card is a total POS & will run all games slower then his "old" GeForce 4.

Good luck! Cap

 

[Captante]

Almost forgot... I suggest the 9100 as the only viable choice if he doesn't have an AGP slot... just wanted to clarify & the folks that are saying buy the cheapest card possible are on the right track.

 

[RussianSensation]

Thanx guys. I found a review actually right here after days of searching:

Various PCI cards Compared from 9100 PCI to 5600 PCI, etc.

and it seems that the card drops in perfomance significantly (to unplayable framerates) when the textures in the game exceed the graphic card's onboard memory.

Basically all the 9100s i've found have 64-bit bus and the 128 ones are in the $65+ range

since his system is old i ended up ordering him a Radeon 9000 Pro for $46

Thanx for all the help anyways