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radeon x800pro on 4x agp. . .

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e36tom

New Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2004
My buddy has a question about his computer running a x800pro at 4x agp and is to lazy to create an account. So im posting it for him :santa: so here is his question...

"Since HL2 is coming out soon, I want a new vid card that will have extremely good graphics in this new generations of games. I will be upgrading from a 9600 pro 128mb to either a x800 pro or a 9800 pro. However i have just found out that my mobo only has a 4x agp slot . . . makes me sad. Any how, i was wondering if this would greatly affect the performance out of these 2 videocards. I tried doing a little research and found the bench marks of a 4x 9700pro v. 8x 9700pro. In mostly everything the 8x barely out performed the 4x, only by a sliver, and in some things the 4x was better.

So my question is: is it worth buy an x800pro with on 4x agp capability? if not then should i buy or 9800pro? Thanks a lot."

computer specs of his computer
2.6 ghz pentium 4 ht
9600 pro 128mb
512 ram (p2700,)
40 gb hd
400w sparkle psu
asus p4pe-x mobo
 
The AGP bus is really only used (I think) when the video card needs to pull data from the computer's main memory. The performance hit in just accessing the memory, whether you have 4x or 8x, is usually so significant that your AGP speed doesn't matter a whole ton. 4x gives a 9800 Pro all the bandwidth (or almost, anyway) that it can really use.

The X800 is a different matter - it's a much higher bandwidth card, and I believe it does actually utilize the speed of AGP 8x.
 
Yeah, but with only a 2.6ghz P4, I don't think AGP is going to be the biggest bottleneck.

Don't worry about the AGP bus constricting that system. The CPU power (or lack thereof) will do it first.
 
Actually I would recomend running the X800 on 4x. Whenever I run it on 8x it hogs up alot of bandwidth. When I am playing a game and it accesses the hard drive, for example, it locks a tad in the game and thne resumes quickly after.

But on 4x its still amazingly fast (about 11,500 - 12,000 in 3D MArk 03) and My system performs better.
 
No, it really isn't. You're going to get the best performance out of 8x - the 9800 Pro isn't going to hog a massive amount of bandwidth.
 
Actually, a 9800 of any flavor has significantly more bandwidth than any AGP port.

9800SE: 128bit 300mhz (600 DDR) memory = 9.2gb/sec
9800NP: 256bit 310mhz (620 DDR) memory = 18.9gb/sec
9800Pro: 256bit 337mhz (674 DDR) memory = 20.5gb/sec
9800XT: 256bit 365mhz (730 DDR) memory = 22.3gb/sec

X800Pro: 256bit 450mhz (900 DDR) memory = 27.5gb/sec
X800XT: 256bit 500mhz (1000 DDR) memory = 30.5gb/sec
X800XTPE: 256bit 560mhz (1120 DDR) memory = 34.1gb/sec

AGP 1x: 32 bit 66mhz (66 SDR) = 251mb/sec
AGP 2x: 32 bit 66mhz (133 DDR) = 503mb/sec
AGP 4x: 32 bit 66mhz (266 QDR) = 1007mb/sec
AGP 8x: 32 bit 66mhz (533 ODR) = 2014mb/sec

The AGP port is a HUGE bottleneck in any circumstance, you REALLY know it when pulling textures across the AGP bus. But since it's such a slowdown point anyway, knocking it down to 4x really doesn't do much more damage :p So long as your video card has enough ram onboard, the AGP bus really won't change your game framerate by much if any.
 
The AGP port is a HUGE bottleneck in any circumstance, you REALLY know it when pulling textures across the AGP bus. But since it's such a slowdown point anyway, knocking it down to 4x really doesn't do much more damage So long as your video card has enough ram onboard, the AGP bus really won't change your game framerate by much if any.
That's correct. But those bandwidth numbers you listed above are different, I think. That's the GPU --> onboard memory bandwidth, not system --> Video card bandwidth.
 
Im not sure what you guys are saying cause when i went from 4x to 8x on my 9600xt i went up 50 frames in battlefield vietnam and every other game i played. There was a huge performance increase in everything.
 
johan851 said:
That's correct. But those bandwidth numbers you listed above are different, I think. That's the GPU --> onboard memory bandwidth, not system --> Video card bandwidth.


Exactly , those number you quoted are not number between the vid card / system

it is numebr between tghe GPU / Memory - i know of NO game that uses a full 8xAGP banwidth let alone 4x AGP - maybe Doom III and other new games may start to use that banwidth, but not very soon.
 
Jacobman said:
Im not sure what you guys are saying cause when i went from 4x to 8x on my 9600xt i went up 50 frames in battlefield vietnam and every other game i played. There was a huge performance increase in everything.

Can anybody else confirm this??
 
it is numebr between tghe GPU / Memory - i know of NO game that uses a full 8xAGP banwidth let alone 4x AGP - maybe Doom III and other new games may start to use that banwidth, but not very soon.
Hmm. I was about to say that it's not the game using the bandwidth as much as the card's requirements, but now that I actually think about it...Doom III and the like would be more likely to use that bandwidth, seeing as they use a lot of textures that the video card can't necessarily hold all at once.
 
Every game in the world uses the full AGP bandwidth available, at least once each time they're run. Even your OS uses it.

Think about it.

How do textures get to the video card? Geometry? How does any of the information get sent to your video card? It's not plugged into a serial port, it's not plugged into an ISA slot, it isn't getting it by RF or IR.

It may take 50ms or 500ms, but that data is going across the AGP port just as fast as it can. The difference is, a lot of newer games transfer textures on-the-fly when they're needed, so a slower AGP port can cause hiccups in certain instances.

But again, from 4x to 8x really isn't that noticeable. You're not relying on that bandwidth for most gameplay, you're simply using it for texture and geometry initial loads and changes. But falling all the way back to 2x can make an appreciable difference when running bigger and newer games.
 
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