Stupid question time: I am upgrading my video card. My motherboard supports AGP 1x/2x/4x. Does this restrict me to an older card, or will one that includes ‘AGP 8x’ in its specs work OK?
An AGP 8x card should work fine. It’s not the AGP that will be the problem in any case.
That depends. Before doing any video card or MB upgrades, check into possible conflicts. I had loads of problems with my Radeon 9800 Pro before realizing that my Asus P4S800 MB had issues with 8X and ATI cards. Had to turn it to 4X in the BIOS to get fully stable games. Which doesn’t affect game performance in any noticeable way, thankfully, but is still irritating. It seems like we’ve entered a new age of hardware incompatibilities and bugs. I’ve had more issues with video cards and games in the past six months than I had in the previous two or three years.
Do you think these problems with incompatibilities relate in any way with the frequency with which hardware is released, and possibly an indicator that these companies should slow down a bit?
It sounds like you have an 8X board and an 8X card and still have problems. Saying that AGP won’t be a problem is perhaps a bit too strong, basically everything can be a problem, but it shouldn’t be a problem to use an 8x card in a 4x slot. If your problem is common it might even be less trouble to use an 8x card in a 4x slot…
You guys are confusing AGP 8X with AGP 3.0. The first is a bandwidth measurement and the second is a specification largely applying to voltage supplied and various tolerances.
A friend of mine bought a new 9800pro (AGP 3.0, AGP 4/8X, 1.5v/0.8v) and it didn’t work in his pentium-3 machine. I traded him my 9700pro (AGP 3.0, AGP 2/4/8X, 3.3v/1.5v/0.8v) and it worked fine.
Before you take out your creditcard, check that your motherboard supports AGP 3.0 and supplies the required voltage to the AGP slot.