AGP Question

[rogun]

I recently bought a Celeron 900MHz to go with my old Abit BX6r2 mobo and was hoping to try it at 1200MHz. I understand that boards with BX chipsets don't have an AGP 1/2 divider and therefore must run the AGP bus at 89MHz. I have an ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder and am wondering how well these cards run on an 89MHz AGP bus? Does anyone know?

[BoYRaCeR]

New cards like the GF2 and later can usually handle that speed. Although my GF3 doesn't like the slightest bit of AGP overclock for some odd freakin reason. WHy dont you try it out... if it locks or doesn't run I guess it cant handle it. My bros cheap Kyro II can handle it with no problem though.

[dscline]

It will vary from card to card due to variations of the tolerances in the various components, but I had a Radeon AIW that I ran at 92Mhz with no problems.

[takiwa]

I'm having the same problem with my ATI card...every now and then (at least twice a week) it freaks out on me because of the bus...guess I'll have to get a new card, too...

[rogun]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I haven't tried to run the card overclocked yet and guess the only way I'll know if it'll work is to try it. Atleast I know that it worked for dscline, so it may work for me.

I'm basically just afraid that it might burn-up the card. I'm guessing that's pretty unlikely at 89MHz, but if I'm wrong then please let me know before I screw up.... :=)

[dscline]

I've never heard of anyone burning up a card from the bus speed being too high, at least not at the speeds we're talking about. Overclock the GPU too high, and that's potentially another story.

[rogun]

That's great to hear! I don't even know how to oc a GPU. Does raising the bus speed not oc it? I've always ran my video cards at the default speed.

[dscline]

No, the AGP speed, GPU speed, and mem speed are three different things. Your mobo determines the AGP speed, and if it's too high, the vid card just can't communicate with the mobo without errors. The vid cards GPU and memory can also be overclocked. On the original Radeon series, the GPU and ram were designed to operate at the same speed (synchronously), but some overclocking tools will allow you to overclock the GPU & memory to different speeds. Some have reported lower stability when the two are set to different speeds (overclocked asynchronously), but I tried it with no problems. My AIW would overclock from stock (166Mhz) to about 180Mhz without any problems. A better GPU HS/fan can help... the one on the AIW is quite puny. Some people have said that high AGP speeds can lower the overclockability of the card, but I can't confirm that. My 180Mhz card overclock was at my overclocked AGP of 92Mhz.

[rogun]

Thanks for the information dscline. That's everything I needed to know! Now with a little luck I'll be joining the gig club soon.