Running an AGP 8x card on AGP 4x

[myspoontoobig]

building my friend a rrreeaalllly cheap computer for like 300, it's pretty much my computer right now cause all my new parts just came in so he gets my old ones

it will look like:
asus p4b 533fsb agp4x
p4 1.7 ghz
768mb pc2700
ati radeon 9000pro 64mb

he just wants a comp to play guild wars and ut4...playing ut4 at 1024x768 with settings all at normal i was getting 60fps while running around and 35-40fps during battles. guild wars im not too sure how demanding it is on your gpu. most likely he will want a better gfx card though and im wondering exactly how bad is it to run an agp8x card in an agp4x slot as my mobo only supports up to agp4x. take for example the XFX geforce fx5500. how much will the agp slot at 4x differ from 8x?

 

[Budman]

4X vs 8X is very very minimal ,tell your friend not to worry about that.

 

[DaveSimmons]

AGP 4x will make almost zero difference, current cards don't really benefit from the extra speed.

That said, I'm not sure the 5500 is not going to give you good enough speed. I haven't read any 5500 benches, but the 5600 was a weak card.

In your shoes I'd hunt down some benchmarks and see how it compares to a 9600 pro and xt -- you might decide a used 9600 xt makes more sense. Also look at the prices on 9800 pro since it has gotten much cheaper lately and it's still a very good card for Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and Far Cry.

 

[JBird7986]

I had the P4 1.7GHz, and a 4x AGP chip, and it did make the slightest of differences when I moved to a faster processor, but the jump from a 1.7GHz Williamette P4 to a Socket 939 3400+ A64 had much more serious consequences for the performance of my system than the upgrade from AGP 4-8x.

EDIT: My brother is currently using that system (sans the upgraded vid card which I wasn't ready to upgrade) and reports no problems with the 4x bus and the nVidia MX420 which currently resides in the system.