Canith Posted March 25, 2005 Share Posted March 25, 2005 i am currently using a 2 year old computer with on-board graphic. since i cannot play many 3D games with it, so i am planning to buy a new graphic card, yet i am not sure what kind of slot my computer has. can anyone tell me how to check it. if it is PCI, can it support an AGP graphic card?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jedipodo Posted March 25, 2005 Share Posted March 25, 2005 A picture tells a thousand words. So, mainboard.bmp "Jedi poodoo!" - some displeased Dug S.L.J. said he has already filmed his death scene and was visibly happy that he Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iceman879 Posted March 25, 2005 Share Posted March 25, 2005 A model number and make of your PC would be helpful. You can usually look up system specs on the manufacter's website. Assuming of course that it's a brand name PC. However, if you open your case, typically you'll find two - four types of slots. There's memory slots, these are easy to identify cause memory modules are smaller than PCI or AGP cards. They also are not near the edge of the board. The AGP slot is grouped with PCI slots. AGP is always closest to the CPU and offset slightly from the PCI slots. There'll be a bunch of identical sized slots below the AGP slot. These are all PCI slots. If there's any other really small slot near these others, just ignore it. It doesn't hold a graphics card. AGP and PCI aren't compatible hence the different names. Oh and one last piece of info, being two years old, your AGP slot is either 4x or 8x. I'm not sure which, but if you know how to access your BIOS, you could probably determine that in there too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russki Bear Posted March 25, 2005 Share Posted March 25, 2005 It is more complex than that. I am sorry to the fellow above, but don't open your case. If you open up device manager and look under System Devices you should see something like "VIA CPU to AGP2.3/AGP3.0 Controller" which is off my current system. AGP v1 supplied the card with 3.3V, AGP2 went to 1.5 or 3.3V, AGP3/3.5 is 0.8V or 1.5V. From AGP3, if the card couldn't function with 1.5V or less iti had to have a power connector on the back so you could plug in a system power plug. AGP 1.0 was 1X/2X, AGP 2.0 was 4X and AGP 3.0/3.5 is 8X. I *think* any card that is AGP3 compliant can go in an AGP1/2 slot but check, even though it will definitely be at reduced efficiency if it does. If you have an AGP 3.0 slot, then you can't use an earlier video card that needs a 3.3V supply from the motherboard. Russki Bear Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canith Posted March 25, 2005 Author Share Posted March 25, 2005 ooooo, see it, thank q guys now the second question is will PCI Express quickly replace AGP? coz now i am not sure if i should just buy an AGP graphic card, or buy a new mother board and a PCI Express graphic card. any suggestions of which card to buy?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haitoku Posted March 25, 2005 Share Posted March 25, 2005 ooooo, see it, thank q guys now the second question is will PCI Express quickly replace AGP? coz now i am not sure if i should just buy an AGP graphic card, or buy a new mother board and a PCI Express graphic card. any suggestions of which card to buy?? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> AGP is still very good. The performance different at the moment is very little. But, if your interested in getting a new mobo, why not get a PCI-Express? Nothing to lose and much to gain :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
locoguano Posted March 25, 2005 Share Posted March 25, 2005 ooooo, see it, thank q guys now the second question is will PCI Express quickly replace AGP? coz now i am not sure if i should just buy an AGP graphic card, or buy a new mother board and a PCI Express graphic card. any suggestions of which card to buy?? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> PCI express looks like it will be the new thing, simply because AGP's main weakness is that it is ONLY a video card slot... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canith Posted March 26, 2005 Author Share Posted March 26, 2005 k, thX for the info Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iceman879 Posted March 27, 2005 Share Posted March 27, 2005 will PCI Express quickly replace AGP?coz now i am not sure if i should just buy an AGP graphic card, or buy a new mother board and a PCI Express graphic card. any suggestions of which card to buy?? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> PCIE will replace AGP as quickly as PCI replaced the ISA slots. Ok, unfair analysis. It's not going to be a complete replacement within the next year. Don't buy a new Motherborad unless you're interested in a totally new system. With a two year old system, buying a new motherboard might require buying a new CPU and new memory to go with it. You'd need to know what socket your CPU uses and the type of memory used in your system. I'd just go with an AGP card. If you buy a Nvidia 6600 or 6800, or something mid-range to high end from ATI, then you'll be good to go for most gaming for another few years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Hades Posted March 27, 2005 Share Posted March 27, 2005 What is the difference between PCI Express and PCI though? Can a regular PCI board work on a PCI express and vice versa? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User Name Posted March 27, 2005 Share Posted March 27, 2005 What is the difference between PCI Express and PCI though? Can a regular PCI board work on a PCI express and vice versa? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No - totally different architecture there. PCIe is a nice idea, but at the moment it's only really worth upgraing to it if you're going down the sli route. For th most part you'll see no difference between agp and pcie perfromance wise. Eventually it'll be worth chaning, but by the time cards come out that exploit the advantages of pcie, today's processors will be too slow to cope with them. Canith - it's possible that you motherboard won't have an agp slot. If it does, it will be brown, kind of set in the middle of your motherboard, just above your pci slots (the long beige things). If you can post back with your pc make and model number (or preferably your motherboard make and model) we can see what you have. Also post you pc's specs and we should be able to recommend a couple of cards. N Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pa3PyX Posted March 28, 2005 Share Posted March 28, 2005 I had an AGP v2 card and it did not work in AGP v1 slot. The other one I have is AGP v3 card, it does work in AGP v2 slot but the manual says it will not work in AGP v1. From what I remember, however, an AGP v2 slot will take any AGP v1 card (I had Voodoo 3 stuck in SL-75DRV5 for quite some time -- worked well -- if only it had decent OpenGL support and had at least SOME kind of texture compression for those 16M of on-board memory, I probably would not have upgraded till now). I'm not sure about AGP v3; I've seen mainboards that are supposedly AGP v3 only. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrich81 Posted March 28, 2005 Share Posted March 28, 2005 A lot of agp cards are keyed so they will only work in certain agp slots. For instance a 6800 (agp 8x) will also work in an agp 2.0 slot (4x) but not agp 1.0 (2x) as it physically won't fit. Different agp revolutions are different voltages, which can also affect compatibility. Always check which version the card and your motherboard support before buying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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