Ive just replaced my aging Geforce 4600 ti with a Geforce 6800 GT. Problem is Im still using an 3 yr old Asus 266 MB wich only has an AGP bus speed of 4. Will I notice much difference if I upgrade the board to a MB with x8?
There will be an improvement, though from what Ive read not as much as you might expect
Certainly not as much as when you throw that old nasty mobo/cpu away and buy summat good to go with your nice new graphics card
I have to say that it depends on your card. LOADS of people moaned about AGP 4x "not making any difference" when it was new ... until the new batch of cards came out. Best to read up about your card imhfo
The theoretical difference between AGP 4x and 8x is, as people have said, probably more notable than any real-world difference as far as I know. My notebook has an AGP 4x bus and yet it still flies along in the latest of games, so it's certainly more the graphics card and rest of the system than the bus that's the important in most instances.
Obviously AGP 8x is more preferable than 4x, just as PCI-Express 16x is better than AGP 8x, but at the moment there's often little notable difference in real-world gameplay. No doubt there are exceptions, and the future may well bring with it a need for greater bus bandwidth, but for now I think you should be alright with AGP 4x.
Unless you have the money burning a whole in your pocket and the rest of the system would benefit from a new motherboard, I'd probably save your money for now. Just my opinion, though, and I must confess I haven't read up on all this for a while.
Hmm, interesting comments. I benchmarked my system compared to others with the same gragphics card and the performance of my system was 30- 50% slower than everone elses. I guessed it was because of my x4 bus.
It must be the processor (xp 2400) and the 266mhz Ram thats causing the bottleneck then.
Having said that I can run games like Halflife 2 and Brothers in Arms at the highest settings and it runs sweetly, so I guess Ill hold back before investing anymore money.
Catsby has a 2600+ (KT333) and has recently upgraded from a Geforce 4600 ti. Catsby is a bit disappointed, as the bottleneck is clearly the cpu. Catsby has deduced this by reducing the load on the gfx card by lowering resolution and image quality, and the fram rate did not increase by much.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.