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What is AGP 4x?

W

WildHare

Junior Member
I am looking at a video card that has a AGP 4x interface. I am familiar with AGP, and my motherboard supports that, but what does the 4x mean? Will a 4x card work with all AGP motherboards (ok, I guess I really just care if it will work with mine)? I've pasted in a blurb about my motherboard, ABIT VA6, below. If it matters, I am running a PIII 500 with 256 mb ram. The card I am looking at is an ASUS GeForce Pro 64 (Asus V7100 Pro TV; 64MB SDRAM; AGP4x interface; Geforce2 MX400 chipset; TV out).

Any help is appreciated. Thanks much!


http://www.abit-usa.com/english/index.htm
[ ABIT VA6 Pentium® III AGP Based ATX Mainboard Supporting 133 MHz FSB & Ultra DMA 66 With CPU SoftMenuTM II Technology ]
ABIT Computer announces the VA6, supporting all Intel Pentium® III/II and CeleronTM processors with FSB up to 133 MHz using the VIA chipset. The VA6 supports all performance level features such as AGP 1X/2X and three 168-pin DIMM sockets supporting up to 768 MB MAX with ECC and includes an integrated AC'97 Digital Audio controller. The VA6 also features ABIT's SoftMenuTM II as well as 2x Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to four Ultra DMA 33/66 devices. With 4 USB and hardware monitoring capability, the VA6 provides power and features at an affordable price.
 
it lets the video card & cpu talk to each other ~4 times as fast. yes, a 4x card will work in any agp slot.
 
There's only one type of mobo you need to really look out for if you don't have an AGP4x card - that's the i850 based boards, they've got AGP4x ONLY slots.

Anything other than this can take (one way or the other) any AGP-card (as long as the board has an AGP-slot. It may not run at full speed (i.e.: an AGP4x card in a 2x slot will only run at 2x), but that's not THAT bad, considering the bottleneck is mostly the GFX-cards memory bandwidth.

AGP == 266 MB/s
AGP 2x == 532 MB/s
AGP 4x == 1064 MB/s

... if I haven't got my numbers wrong 😀.

Hope this helps 😀
 
All AGP cards and motherboards with AGP slots are fully backwards and forwards compatible.

You can insert an AGP1X or AGP2X capable card into an AGP4X, conversely you can insert an AGP4X card into an AGP1X/AGP2X motherboard.

There are 2 exceptions to this rule: AGP Pro cards require an AGP Pro slot for the extra power pins. Secondly the i850 chipset can only supply a maximum of 1.5 volts to AGP cards. Most cards, irrespective of whether they are 1X, 2X, or 4X, can handle either 1.5 volts or 3.3 volts. 3dfx Voodoo cards require 3.3 volts and not 1.5 volts, and so cannot be used on i850 chipset motherboards.
 
Thanks everyone!

I actually have decided not to buy right now, but it's because I misread the description of the item for sale. I thought it was a GeForce 2 Pro, but its an MX400 with the word "Pro" thrown in. All of a sudden, $130 isn't the steal I thought it was. Oh well.... 🙂
 
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