PC Graphics Cards

[sneeks]

I have a 4 year old Packard Bell PC at home and I'd like to swap the graphics card in it for something better, currently a 32mb agp card. Will the current crop of budget agp cards work ok with a 4 year old motherboard or not?

Most PCI options I have seen are not compatible as they are all PCI Express.

 

[Gareth]

i think you have answered your own question mate.

 

[sneeks]

I have answered my own question concerning PCI cards but not AGP.

 

[Darren S]

Sneeks - you maybe struggling a little bit there, m8. At a guess, 4-year-old might PC may put it into the x4 AGP category which was dominated by the GeForce Ti4600 and others in their day. The later x8 AGP cards like the 9800 Pro were considerably better.

There's no harm done, getting a faster x8 AGP card and putting it into a x4 motherboard slot though. Most, if not all cards will ramp-down to the maximum that the mobo will support.

D.

 

[sneeks]

I'll try find out the speed of the AGP slot on my motherboard but I fear it may be a x2 ;D

Thanks for the reply Darren

 

[Darren S]

I'll try find out the speed of the AGP slot on my motherboard but I fear it may be a x2 ;D

Thanks for the reply Darren

No probs sneeks. It's probably best getting what you can for the money. The AGP card should ramp down from x8 to x4 to x2 and then finally x1 and still work fine. In all honesty, I'd do an eBay such for an AGP card these days. With the majority of mobos being PCI-E, like you've already found out, most AGP owners are off-loading them for pennies.......... or bining them completely.

D.

 

[Strider]

I have a 4 year old Packard Bell PC at home and I'd like to swap the graphics card in it for something better, currently a 32mb agp card. Will the current crop of budget agp cards work ok with a 4 year old motherboard or not?

Most PCI options I have seen are not compatible as they are all PCI Express.

Yes they will. But remember only AGP cards.

I would expect your motherboard to clock its AGP card at x4. Card's these days are x8 but they will downclock to run at your motherboards speed.

But then again I have a 5 year old PC in this house that has an x8 graphics card running inside it.

Have a look on the back of the PC and make a note of the model number and I'll see what I can dig up for you

 

[wozzaa]

sticking an 8x card in a 4x slot wont make much difference to performance either very little of the 8x bandwidth was used over 4x due to certain other limiting factors in the systems bus.