Topic awaiting preservation: Video Card ?

Will a Radeon 9200 se atlantis. AGP 8X 128 mb DDR work on a mobo that the "AGP Mode" is only 4X maximum?

If it does I suppose it's a bit of a waste but down the road sometime I'll likely upgrade the mobo and I'd like to drag along as many parts as possible. Make sense? Almost forgot... running 800 celeron 450+ mg ram

My main interest is graphix stuff. I'm buying some sort of video card tomorrow.
thnx

I'd bet it won't make much of a difference to use such a graphics card in a mobo with an AGP slot 4x or 8x enabled. Much of this 2x, 4x, 8x stuff is pure merchandising and only the latest and most expensive graphics card will fully use the newest specs.

A quick search in Google gave me this page: http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=32560,00.asp

Thanx Viol... =) Gave me a bit more to think about. I'd almost forgotten about the extra monitors I have hidden away so now I'm thinking about a dual monitor card.

That card will run 2 monitors.

It should also work... but not as well as it was made.

I would really consider how soon you are going to get a new mobo though. If soon, i would go for it... but if you are going to wait 6 months... dont spend all your money now.

Prices go down and better cards come out.


[antique sigs are us]

You can use two graphics card to run dual monitor also.
Just stick a PCI graphics card along with an AGP one, and there you have it.
I used to do this in Brazil, using an old PCI card and my current computer. Today I have only one monitor because I brought only one from there.

[This message has been edited by viol (edited 02-15-2004).]

I'd recomend you spend the money on a better mobo/cpu and keep the video card you have (as long as it's a GeForce2+).

AGP speeds mean absolutly nothing unless the game requires more video ram than the card can support onboard, then it'll use the AGP bus to access system ram. Appart from that it means absolutly nothing, and even if you do need to use the AGP bus it'll usually slow the game down to an unplayable level regardless of the AGP speed as even 8x is many factors slower than onboard VRAM.

For the most part, AGP is little more than marketing hype, but the sales figures show that people think it matters so they just keep hyping the shit. I'm also thinking regardless of how fast your AGP bus is, yah never gonna run games that need more than 128 MB of video ram on a celery 800.

The only time AGP really matters when you have a fast system with an underpowered video card.

I'd say the biggest thing currently holding you PC back (baring a semi decent T&L video card, which you can pick up for nix just about anywhere) is the main CPU. So if you're looking for the biggest performance boost for your dollar that's where you'll likey find it.

Once you have a decent CPU & mobo, then start saving your pennies to shop aorund for a nice DX8/9 video card to go along with it. At least, that's what I'd do.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 02-15-2004).]

Eyez: The specs on that card sez tv-vcr but I couldn't find anything about another monitor which as I understand isn't the same. I'll see if I can find more.

Viol: When you run the 2 cards do you see one screen across both monitors or individual screens on each? I'm also betting there's IRQ conflicts to deal with.

Cam: I'm always years behind the technology my mobo can't take anything more than the 800 celery =) and a new mobo/cpu isn't in the cards in the near future but I have to do something with the video card (don't hit me now) s3virge... =)

Shopping tomorrow.

Thnx folks

NoJive, I don't understand what you mean by "one screen across both monitors" and "individual screens on each".

When I used 2 cards, an old PCI Matrox card and an AGP Voodoo 3000 card (a long-time discontinued brand), I used two 17" CRT monitors, both at 1024x768 resolution, and it was as if I had one big area of 2048 x 768 pixels. I could move windows from one monitor to the other, I could leave half the window showing in one monitor while the other half would show in the other monitor, and so on.

I believe that due to my graphics cards being old (specially the first one, that was older than a Voodoo 3000 !!), some applications, like video and video games, I couldn't play "half in one side, half in the other side". I don't remember, it's been one year and a half now since I stopped using it, but I guess I could play games and video only in my main monitor, the one with the AGP card (Voodoo). I'm almost sure that the problem was that my Matrox card was really old, but for usual office work, it was good enough when dealing with the second monitor.

Another point is that the taskbar of Windows XP was visible only in the main monitor also. I never tried to move it to the other monitor, but it didn't show across both monitors.

And I didn't have any IRQ conflict. It was a very good plug-n-play experience. Just added the old card, the old CRT and WinXP recognized both and they were already working okay.

After arriving here in the USA, I bought an ATI 8500DV, retired the Voodoo, and that's how it is since then, with just one monitor.

[This message has been edited by viol (edited 02-16-2004).]

ooh, i was looking at the wrong card. there are some version of the 9200 that have 2 plugs on the back. that fancy white plug and a bloo plug. so uh, nevermind.


[antique sigs are us]