AGP 4x same as 8x?

[JohnD]

My old PC is running well, old but plenty of memory and disk, now on XP, a PCC266 M810MR m/b with T-bird chipset. Graphics are a bit slow and jerky esp with videoclips (I don't do games) on 800 x 600 in 32-Bit Color, SiS 730s Ver. 6.13 and I wanted to improve this.

The booklet says it has onboard graphics with a 128bit 2D/3D 100MHz AGP Graphics Accelerator and supports a hardware DVD Accelerator.

It has an optional AGP4X slot for AGP2.0 compliant interface. Looking at my supplier's catalogue, they seem to be selling only AGP8x cards. How can I tell if an 8x card will work? I have had a look at the PCC website which tells me what CPUs will fit my m/b, but not AGP cards (I have a list in the booklet but they are all obsolete now). If I buy a cheap use 8x card off fleabay and try it, will it do any harm?

 

[Doc Lenny]

New AGP8x Cards should be compatible but only run at 4x speed.

Some info here from Nvidia

http://www.widowpc.com/pdfs/AGP8X_92502v1.pdf

 

[Igorian]

It's also worth checking your BIOS to see if you can allocate more memory to the onboard grahics adaptor. Sometimes you can allocate say 128MB of system memory, but it defaults to a miserly 8, 16 or 32MB

 

[JohnD]

Thanks. My BIOS only lets me allocate up to 64 (which I've done).

The NVidia doc tells me that the AGP8x card identifies what it's plugged into, and configures the i/f to run at 4x or 2x if that's all the motherboard supports. It uses the same connector. I dare say other manufacturers do the same. So I should be safe and will get one off fleabay. I don't suppose it would help getting a super duper card if my motherboard is going to throttle it back, and I can't see how it will compare to the on-board SIS graphics, but I am thinking a 128MB AGP8x card should make a noticable improvement.