Is there a difference between AGP4x/8x if it's IGP?

In a recent article, theinquirer.net said that the IGP nforce2 boards are limited to AGP 4x. However, they seemed to think this wanst a big deal because there is a very little difference between AGP 4X and 8X (ie. the GF4 4600 vs. 4800). I would agree with them on AGP CARDS. However, I don't see how it could possibly hold true with an IGP since they are severely limited by their access to the memory on the motherboard. So i emailed them explaining this and they stuck to thier guns. Am i wrong here? or is theinquirer?

Link:http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=8535

I don't think there would be a significant difference at all. There are a couple of mitigating factors that would prevent you from fully using AGP 4x's bandwidth when using IGP.

The most important is the bandwidth limitation imposed by using the system memory. Remember that you get very, very little bandwidth as compared to any average video card.

If you are able to achieve a 200mhz FSB on an Nforce2 board and use dual channel you're still pretty limited as to what you can provide.

Shade00 said:

The most important is the bandwidth limitation imposed by using the system memory. Remember that you get very, very little bandwidth as compared to any average video card.

Click to expand...

That's my point. AGP 8x doubles the bandwidth from 1GB/s in 4X to 2.1 in 8X. The only reason we dont see a boost in performance in AGP cards is because they bypass this bottleneck by using their own memory.

but what would happen to a 166fsb athlon if 2.1gb of its 2.7gb mem bandwidth went to video, that drops it back to like pc66 speeds, would hurt the game even more than help it. now if dual channel ram works the way its supposed to i think you would see some improvment, but its hard to say how much