how can i tell if i have a 1.5v agp card?

[Emericana]

ok here is the deal. i have started building a pentium 4 system for my dad tonight.

the board is a MSI i845G board. For a job my dad is a website designer so he needed a card that was great in photoshop.

i chose the Matrox G450 because it was very cheap and matrox is supposed to have the best 2d out of all of the graphics cards.

i knew that there was onboard video on the mobo but i didnt care cause it was $95 so it was very well priced. i am just gonna disable onboard video in bios.

anyways.... i open up the mobo box and there is a big yellow sheed of paper that says on it "DONT USE 2.2v AGP CARDS" on it there were a list of graphics cards that used 2.2v. namely all the 3dfx ones. HOwever one caught my eye. the Matrox G400. I have a G450 not a G400. It said right below that using any of these cards can cause perm damage to the mobo.

how do i find out if the G450 is standard 1.5v?

[JudgeDredd]

I searched their site high and low and it did not mention what volts it uses. If no one else here can help you, another option is to just Email them and ask.

[DaddyB]

cards that can run at agp 4x will run at 1.5v, in agp 1x or 2x the voltage is 3.3v. so i would think any card capable of agp 4x would be ok in that board.

the strange part is AFAIK there are no agp cards that use 2.2V... only pci cards. I must be missing something but that is what I have always read.

here (http://www.plasma-online.de/index.html?content=http%3A//www.plasma-online.de/english/help/almanach/agp.html) is a site with some agp specs that you may find useful.

[Emericana]

oh it must have been a typo then but it says on the matrox site that the G400 supports AGP 4x as well (so does the G450) but it said on that yellow paper not to use that card.

EDIT: I posted on the Matrox tech support forum and they responded to me assuring it would be fine. Thanks guys!

[dansonang]

I know the only way to identify them is to differentiate the contact between the video card and the agp slot. I f u look carefully 3.3V video card's contact with the AGp slot is different from that of the 1.5v. Do u have a current video card from the Geforce2 series onwards. if u have compare the contact between the matrox and yr current card. They should look the same. If i am not wrong, for the 3.3v there is only one depression while the 1.5v has 2 depressions or it is situated elsewhere.

I also had this problem when I was buying a new video card and discover it coincidentally. Agp 1X slot is different from that of 2X and 4X, though they look somewhat the same