x4 / x8

[Foxtrot360 0]

Well, i got a new ABIT KX7-333, and it only supports x4, i have a video card that sucks, Radeon 9250 128 AGP, but that supports x8, havent been able to try gaming with that yet, so will i see a big difference in x8 (what its always been, or mobo integrated) and x4 (never tried this, prolly gonna make my pc slower than what it already is, great....)

specs- I need to ugprade everything next year , I just want this to play games ( no im not gonna turn my GRs settings down for it) until then.

ABIT KX7-333 Motherboard (Stupid AGP slot only has AGP 2.0 and not 3.0)

Radeon 9250 128MB x8 AGP

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53 GHz (Im definently getting more of this)

A gaming case (Not changing)

Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 80 GB HDD

1 gig DDR RAM , i think its 333MHz standard (thanks to GreyHaired )

Soundblaster LIVE! (prolly wont change)

Yamaha CD-RW/R burner drive (not changing)

DVD ROM (not changing)

Floppy A (not changing)

350w PSU or it maybe be 420w or 450w soon

1 Exhaust fan , room for another..

Case lights

And not alot of patience

I dont overclock my crap and i dont throw my pc on the ground in an angry rage...

and soon ill be doing the PC stuff myself so dont bug me about that..

Edited November 21, 2005 by Foxtrot23

[GreyHaired 0]

No you won't notice any difference between 4x and 8x.

Most PCs bought in shops come with AGP4x as default in the bios and many people never find out.

[pz3 338]

what is the diffrence between 4x and 8x anyways?

[Foxtrot360 0]

I dont know.. I think if the graphics card doesent go as fast as x8 it dont matter anyway because it can do just the same at x4, or something like that

I think its the Accelerated Graphics Port's speed?

If i just happened to overclock my proccessor would it die a month later?

Edited November 21, 2005 by Foxtrot23

[KRP 56 92]

what is the diffrence between 4x and 8x anyways?

←

One of our pc experts might be able to explain this better but it's my understanding that 4x means 4 transfers per clock cycle and 8x means 8 transfers per clock cycle. Bandwidth is also higher on a 8x card. Is it twice as good? I doubt you would see much difference in most cases.

[calius 0]

I have a 9800PRO in a 4x max AGP speed mobo and my frame rates are normal to others with 8x so I cant see much difference ... maybe it may help with CPU & mem speed but it cant be that great seeing as now its all moving away from AGP.

[GreyHaired 0]

Before AGP we had “pci” and a pc had/has 4-5 pci slots. All those slots are controlled via a “bus” and all slots have to share the bandwidth.

Compare it with a schoolbus with 4-5 pupils thus 4-5 stops.

Intel brought us the AGP slot that you can compare with a schoolbus for one pupil.

So when driving from school to the final stop, the second bus will be in first.

When you install the same type of graphics card in a 4x and an 8x AGP rig you can compare it with a normal car and a racing car, running a race on a highway with a speed limit of 90mph.

The racing car has an advantage in acceleration but has to maintain a max speed of 90mph so it cannot “fully utilize the larger bandwidth”. In terms of 4x versus 8x we speak of up to 3% improvement.

Something like that.

[Specter 0]

It also depends on the card you are sticking in that slot.

AGP8x has double the bandwidth available compared to that of an AGP4x card.

If you stick a 9800 Pro card in those slots, you won't see much of a difference, because of the number of pixel pipelines it utilizes. I believe it is only 8, if I'm not mistaken.

Now, you take a card like the Nvidia 6800GT with 256MB of onblard video RAM and shove it into each of those slots.

The performance increase in the 8x slot will be a very marked difference. The AGP 8X slot has the available bandwidth to handle what that card is prcessing in it's 16 pipelines, at the increased GPU and memory clock speeds.

The 9800 nowadays is by standards, a low-end to mid grade card. So you won't see a marked difference. It also depends on what types of games are being played, and what kind of apps are using that card, in what kind of performance gains you will see.

No, alot of what I call "common users" who just play the occassional game, and mainly work with office apps and the web, won't see a difference at all.

But the Hardcore gamer and performance freak will see huge variations in the results.

You will see a big difference with games like HL2 and Far Cry, Jo, SWAT4 and the like.

With older games like GR, VBS1, OFP, etc... You won't see a difference at all, because they are just not graphically demanding by today's standards.

AGP8x is fairly new. 2 years, I think. Those older games would not even know what it is. They weren't written to take advantage of it, like today's games are.

For easy comparison, compare it to broadband internet service with AGP2x being 56K, AGP4x being 512K, and AGP8x bebreaking the 1 Megabit barrier.

[Foxtrot360 0]

argh i give up on upgrading... il save up and build a new pc myself next year then, this kinda bs gets on my nerves.

[whoa182 0]

With AGP x8 you can see HD in real time

with PCI express 16 you can edit HD (hi def) in real time

For games there is not any difference really...

Edited November 24, 2005 by whoa182