Worth upgrading to AGP 8X?

[FleshLight]

Right now I'm running a 6600GT AGP on a sad little agp 4x motherboard with a gig of pc3200 running at pc2100 speeds. Is it a world of difference if I upgrade to a motherboard that supports both of those?

 

[theMan]

umm, is it intel, amd? how old? specs?

 

[V00D00]

If you're running in a 4x AGP setup, then your CPU is probably limiting your FPS more than the AGP bus. Without a doubt.

What speed cpu?

 

[SCOTTYV]

overclcok ur cpu to raise the fsb therefore rasing ur ram speed as well do this til u hit ddr400 or until u are unstable then ur vid card shouldnt be limited .. 4x is just barely used up and 8x is not u should be fien if u can oc

 

[FleshLight]

It's a P4 1.8nw on a stock intel hsf. I'm running on a pos VIA motherboard. I doubt I'll be able to raise the fsb until I hit ddr400.

 

[FleshLight]

Bump

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

You won't see much performance increase (maybe a few percent if that) going from 4x AGP to 8x AGP. You will see a big difference getting your memory to run at DDR400 speeds and overclocking your 1.8 Intel chip with a new motherboard. Usually 1X AGP to 4X AGP saw a good performance increase but going from 4x to 8X really didn't show anything just like going from 8X AGP to 16X PCI-ex (with double the theoretical bandwidth) shows no tangible performance boost.

 

[pentiumobile]

I will tell you my two cents:

I had the same card with a P4 2GHz...AGP 4X...768MB @ 400Mhz

HEAR ME.

It performed almost IDENTICALLY to a P4 2.8...AGP 8X...1GB @333MHz

Real life performance was BARELY noticeable.

 

[ShadowBlade]

if youre going to upgrade, get PCI-e

 

[pentiumobile]

Same here.

Inverting nowadays on agp is like buying a CD player....

Look at ShadowBlade's RIG...just change that FX5200 to a sub 200$ card...and it will KILL your current P4 RIG.

 

[alimoalem]

if you change your mobo, u should go pci-e

 

[Geomagick]

A little bit of overclocking would yield far better improvements than by changing the motherboard.
If you really want to get some extra performance then it would be well worth saving those pennies and getting a new system, or at least making a substantial upgrade

 

[FleshLight]

Thing is, I can upgrade to a PC400 motherboard for $30. But going to the Athlon 3200+ and motherboard will be at least $150. And I don't think it's worth upgrading unless I also go the PCIe route, which will cost me another $150 or so.

So if you guys think there's a noticeable increase in pc3200 and agp8x, I'll probably go for that.

 

[RussianSensation]

Save your money. Save for A64, PCIe or even DDR2 Athlon platform in 1 year.

 

[Ichigo]

Get the Asrock S939 ULI motherboard. You can get a cheap CPU, stick with your current video card, and be able to upgrade later.

 

[BFG10K]

Save your money and upgrade to PCIe.

 

[Ichigo]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Save your money and upgrade to PCIe.

Why? He has a perfectly good video card. The motherboard I recommended definetly would fit his needs. Both AGP & PCI-E slots. Socket 939. CHEAP.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Ichigo

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Save your money and upgrade to PCIe.

Why? He has a perfectly good video card. The motherboard I recommended definetly would fit his needs. Both AGP & PCI-E slots. Socket 939. CHEAP.

You forgot that he also needs to buy a new cpu.

 

[Ichigo]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: Ichigo

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Save your money and upgrade to PCIe.

Why? He has a perfectly good video card. The motherboard I recommended definetly would fit his needs. Both AGP & PCI-E slots. Socket 939. CHEAP.

You forgot that he also needs to buy a new cpu.

So what's wrong with S939?

 

[fire400]

there are 865 premium Intel chipset motherboards for very cheap if you look in the right places around the Internet; boards that used to cost over a hundred dollars a few years ago. thus you'll be able to notice the full DDR400 with overclockable features that you'll find in the nice asus and msi Intel P4 boards.

assuming that your software environment is very clean, the newer hardware architecture will be more noticable.

personally, if you do want to upgrade from the RAM-speed capabilities and the AGP4-8x featuers, go with a pure Intel motherboard. Intel chipsets are superior to its cloning chipset companines, namely, SIS and VIA, etc. Otherwise if you just bump up to another SIS or VIA chipset you'll probably get noticable failers and same performance specs because we're talking about boards that were manufactured by 3rd parties and have been sitting around for some while without being fed a cycle of power-on's.

the 6600 card will get double the bandwidth from 4x to 8x as far as bus transfers go, since the card has been engineered to take full advantage of 8x features.

I think you'll find a good Intel mobo for a little over 50 bucks, then OC the CPU to +2 GHz.