will video cards of AGP x4/x8 work in motherboard agp x2?

[riaz]

i have a old motherboard with an agp of x2. soyo 6vba133
i have the money for a graphics card but not for a new motherboard yet.
I am loking at the chaintech ti4400. it states on there web site that it supports agp x4/x8. it looks like most cards are the same.

Does anyone know if the new graphics will work on my motherboard? or is it a case of having to buy the lot.

thanks for any help.

[Peter M]

8x cards don't necessarily step down to 2x anymore. Practically all 4x cards do, and so do those chips where 8x was retrofitted to an existing 2x/4x chip, like the Radeon 9200 which is just the 9000 plus 8x mode.

Besides, there is little point in putting a really fast graphics card into a P-III system - the GPU will be twiddling thumbs most of the time, waiting for input from the slow CPU.

Finally, you need to watch the power draw from the graphics card.

I suggest you put a Radeon 9000pro in - these are 2x/4x, have a low power consumption, and more rendering speed than your P-III will be able to serve.

[riaz]

the thing is that i am going to upgrade to asus a7n8x, xp2500. system in a few months. so i wanted to get the graphics card now to give my system a boost untill i get the rest of the hardware

[Peter M]

Out of luck then ... the current high performance cards are all 4x/8x-only.

[causticVapor]

There are GeForce 4 Ti's being sold that aren't 8x... just go to newegg.. :t

[NDD]

Better wait those few months ...

[Win2Kuser]

Hey, deja vu Peter M.

Well that answers my question. All the "decent" cards seem to be 4x AGP upwards. Its actually getting hard to find older components. :)

[causticVapor]

I know going from a viper II to a Ti4200 in an old DFI board (694x-based) dramatically sped up framerates, even with an "unsaturating" 733EB processor.

It wasn't an 8x card though.