AGP 1x card for Asus P2B-DS! Help!

[steerpike33]

I'm looking for an AGP 1x card for my Asus P2B-DS motherboard. Preferrably an invidia card but an ATI card is fine as well. The card must also be supported by WindowXP and I know the nvidia cards have XP drivers.

It doesn't have to be a powerful card since I can't get too much power on an AGP 1x slot these days(I know I'm looking for an older card), but something that is good quality, solid and dependable.

All the cards I've found so far have been AGP2x/4x, so if you could recommend something I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks in advance!

 

[jclw]

Actually, the i440BX supports AGP 2x so your worries are over. I think pretty much any card on the market will work.

I have a P2B-D and a Radeon 32 SDR which works just fine.

- JW

 

[Crashman]

LOL, the last guy is 100% correct, your motherboard is AGP2x and should support almost any AGP card on the market! BTW, I'm the BXpert here.

<font color=blue>At least half of all problems are caused by an insufficient power supply!</font color=blue>

 

[steerpike33]

That's very cool that my mobo will support AGP2x. I didn't realize. Now I just need to find a good nvidia/ATI AGP 2x card. Any Suggestions besides the Radeon 32 SDR?

But not any card on the market will work. I found that out the hard way. Bought an Asus v7700 GeForce2 64MB card...it ran fine but not great. Build a new machine with an Asus A7V333 AGP4x and moved the v7700 over and that's when I saw the power of this card. Huge difference.

That's why I need a card for the P2B-DS board...but I want to make sure I get something as powerful as possible that will not be slowed down by the AGP slot as what happened with the v7700.

 

[steerpike33]

Glad to here it's AGP 2x. But it's not AGP 4x. I had an Asus v7700 GeForce2 AGP4x card on the P2B-DS board and never saw the true power of the v7700 until I moved it over to an A7V333 board.

Now I need to find the most powerful AGP 2x card for the P2B-DS that wont be choked by the P2B-DS AGP slot as what happened with the v7700.

Any suggestions?

 

[jclw]

If you list what features are most important to you I'm sure you'll get a few suggestions.

2D quality?
3D quality?
DVD playback?
Video out?
Video in?
Multiple or flat screen monitor support?

Maybe it would be helpful if you told us what card you have now and what you find lacking.

- JW

 

[Crashman]

You're lost. I'm running a BE6-II right now, my previous board was a Soyo SY-BA6+III, which was even faster, but I blew that boards, shame. And my previous board before that was an Epox BX3, same performance but less overclockability. The board I had before that was a Shuttle something or other, same performance, same overclockability. The board I had before THAT was an Asus CUSL2. While the CUSL2 was a great board, all of these BX boards outperformed it in GAMES with both my GeForce 2 GTS (aka your V7700) and my Radeon.

Why did you see so much better performance on your A7V333? Could be the PROCESSOR that made the difference, or did you never think of that. Who endocrtinated you on this faulty path?

Look, the best card for your board is...whatever you can afford to put on it. Will you see the full performance of the card? NO! Is it because it's an AGP2x board? NO! It's the CPU. My suggestion is to get a GeForce2 TI, these cards are faster than GTS and the price has fallen to $40. They are 2x/4x cards, and will work with your board.

Funny that you blame AGP2x for your V7700 not performing, when my GTS gave me better framerates on my BX (AGP2x) than on my CUSL2 (AGP4x). I suggest you get the latest BIOS for the board and set AGP Aperature at 128MB.

<font color=blue>At least half of all problems are caused by an insufficient power supply!</font color=blue>

 

[steerpike33]

Thanks for the great reply. This is the kind of info I'm looking for. I wouldn't say I'm lost or on a faulty path, but I don't know enough about this stuff, that's why I join forums like this one and others to speak with the experts (like yourself) to better inform me so I can make the right decisions.

I realize the CPU, chip set and RAM played a big part in seeing better performance from my v7700 on the A7V333. But I don't think I would have gotten the same performance on my P2B-DS, as you mentioned in your message, due to the CPU, RAM and I assumed the AGP slot, even though the v7700 did indeed work on the P2B-DS.

When the v7700 was on the P2B-DS I did experience times when the graphic display would go to a mess of horizontal lines. Don't know if that was due to frequency settings or the AGP, CPU, RAM...maybe you might know. I figured there was a bottleneck somewhere in the system. Also gameplay would freeze ever so often and then continue. Since the v7700 has been on the A7V333 the display and gameplay has been fine.

I have 2 PIII 600 mhz chips on the P2B-DS. Your suggesting I get a faster card than the one I had on there before and it will work fine, but be limited by my CPU. OK, understood. Oh, I'll check out the AGP Aperature. Also, what about the voltage for the board, with a 300watt power supply do I need to worry about extra power for the card?

Where can I pick one up a GeForce 2 TI for $40.? Any recommendations for brand or are they all the same?

Thanks again for all the excellent help!

 

[steerpike33]

All these features are important, but the Video in/out would be a less important feature.

What do you recommend?

 

[Crashman]

Well, 300W Might Not Be Enough. You are running two CPU's, and I'm guessing these are the older 512k cache versions? Those used a lot of power due to their larger core size/larger die manufacuring process. I'm going to guess you're pulling at least as much power as an Athlon XP2100+ between those two cores.

It's also important to remember that the old Slot 1 512k PIII's were significantly slower in games than the 256k PIII, which wouldn't normally make sense until you take into account the fact that 512k was off-die cache running at 1/2 the CPU core speed and probably 1 latency, while the later processor had on-die cache running at full speed 0 latency.

The cards I saw for $40 were at TigerDirect, but they seem to be out of stock. They have been selling the PNY Verto line cheap. They still have the MX400 for $29, had the GF2TI for $39, and still have the GF3 ti200 for $79 and the original GF3 for $89. Most brands are the same as long as the model is the same.

<font color=blue>At least half of all problems are caused by an insufficient power supply!</font color=blue>

 

[steerpike33]

That's great to know about the CPUs. How do I check my CPUs to see if I have the 512 or 256 versions? Could I safely put faster CPUs on this board?

But to tell you the truth, I don't expect play too many games on it. I might play a few but the other machine will be used for games. Might use it if a buddy comes over and we network the machines for a game. It would be nice to have a good fast card on the P2B but I don't wanna put something on there and never see it's full potential.

Right now I have a Fire GL 4000 on the P2B. Great card, but it only works in WinNT4.0 and I have WinXP on the machine. Thought I'd be able to get XP drivers for it, but no luck. Figured it was worth a shot. This is why I started looking for a more current card for the P2B.

I send in a message to AsusTEK to see what they recommend. Here's their reply...
"We recommend you use ASUS V3800 vga card, When a agp 4x vga card works with p2b-ds , of course the mb can only supports it at agp
2x max, so it will slow down the performance of the vga card."
I don't even know if I can still get that card.

I'll check out the cards you mentioned at TigerDirect. They sound good, at least the prices are good. What is the name and model number of the GF2TI card you saw there for $40. that was out of stock? I'll see if I can find it elsewhere.

Thanks again for all the help!

 

[Crashman]

You can use a simple program such as WCPUID to check the specs on your processsor. BIOS might also give you the specs on that little screen that shows up just after POST. Basically, the earliest PIII was a PII with SSE added, called the Katmai core PIII. Then came the Coppermine, then the Tualatin.
Katmai had 512k of slow cache
Coppermine had 256k of fast cache
The Dual CPU compatable version of the Tualatin had 512k of fast cache as was only available from 1.26GHz onward.

The Tualatin won't work on your board without special BIOS and a Powerleap IP3/t adapter.

The Coppermine was compatable with some versions of your board, but earlier versions of your board couldn't support less than 1.80v for it. I've modified Coppermines to detect at 1.80v or 1.85v for use on older boards such as the early revisions of the P2B series.

The name of the card was PNY Verto GeForce2 TI.

My BX board gives me 3400 in 3DMark 2001SE with an old Radeon DDR 32MB card (actually, the cheaper "LE" version). Faster cards/processors have seen the BX get over 8000 marks, but I'm not about to buy a Tualatin PIII for this thing, nor a Radeon 8500 or faster.

<font color=blue>At least half of all problems are caused by an insufficient power supply!</font color=blue>

 

[Oracle]

I'm also using a P2B on one of my computers (not a DS, just a plain P2B) with a P3 Katmai @ 650Mhz (yes, overclocked) on Win2000 along with an Hercules GeForce2 MX (not a MX400 or MX200, just plain MX) with the latest Detonator drivers from nVidia and I can play all my games. Most demanding is Black&White and it works perfectly. Depending on your usage of the card, a good GeForce2 series card would be fine.
Oh yeah, I also flashed the Hercules with the latest BIOS available for it.

<font color=red>Floppy disk?!? What the heck's a floppy disk?!?</font color=red>

 

[Unolocogringo]

I also have a P2b with a P3700@933 on for about 6 months now. Also running a G2 pro 64 meg. With the fsb at 133 the agp is at 89 which translates to approximately agp2.7x . Just get a pair of regular










p3 coppermines socket 370. Then get two Abit slocket 2 Asus 370 ao Iwill slocket 2 or 3 with the adjustable detected voltage jumpers on it. Then you can run any 100mhz fsb processor. If you have a later revision board that suppports 133fsb such as my wifes comp you can run 133fsb Coppermines also .But you must set the detected voltage to 1.75 or 1.8 v or higher to boot.

Nice board .

I aint signing nothing!!!