Want Radeon 9500 PRO but my AGP is 4X. Should I?

[VitalyB]

Should I buy the card even though its maximum AGP support is 8X and my motherboard (ATI VH6) only can give up to 4X? I'd prefer not to buy a new motherboard. How much would my AGP slot limit hurt the performence?

 

[knowan]

It should work fine. There will be barely any performance difference at all. This is because the AGP4X pipe has not become saturated yet.

I look at it like this. You can drive at 60 mph down a 4 lane highway or you can drive at 60 mph down an 8 lane highway. Either way, so long as there's no congestion you can drive at 60 mph down eith one. Right now there is no congestion on AGP4x. AGP 8X offers little to no improvement.

There is a bit of a difference with geforce cards, but that's because they used better ram on their 8X cards. It has nothing to do with the actual 8x AGP slot.

And yes, 8x cards can be installed in 4x slots. The cards a re backwards compatible.

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[athalus]

i have a radeon 9500 pro running on an agp 4x mobo (gigabyte 8pe667 ultra, 845pe chipset) and it works great. i had an albatron gf4 4200 before and as soon as it came out i replaced it w/the ati.