What's the fastest 2x AGP card?

lucaluca
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Just wondering what the best graphics card is that'll work in a 2x AGP slot. I have a dual 500 on order and the current card is a plain Radeon 32MB AGP. I'm sure it's fine for most things for now, but it would be helpful if I knew what my upgrade options were for the future.



Also, I believe that newer cards will not work with older AGP speeds... this is true? You can't just put a 4x AGP card into a 2x AGP slot and get it to work (of course with lower performance), correct?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    kecksykecksy Posts: 1,002member
    The Radeon 8500 will work in a 2X AGP slot. So will a Geforce4 Ti, but I don't now if you can get one unless you buy a new Mac.



    Remember, 4X AGP cards are backwards compatible with 2X AGP. Similarly newer 8X AGP cards like the Radeon 9700 are backwards compatible with 4X AGP, but not 2X.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    [quote]Originally posted by Son of Pismo:

    <strong>Remember, 4X AGP cards are backwards compatible with 2X AGP. Similarly newer 8X AGP cards like the Radeon 9700 are backwards compatible with 4X AGP, but not 2X.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    ATI disagrees:



    [quote] System Requirements

    *\tIntel® Pentium® 4/III/II/Celeron?, AMD® K6/Duron?/Athlon®/Athlon XP® or compatible with AGP 2X (3.3v), 4X (1.5V), 8X (0.8v) or Universal AGP 3.0 bus configuration (2X/4X/8X).

    *\t128MB of system memory

    *\tInstallation software requires CD-ROM drive

    *\tDVD playback requires DVD drive<hr></blockquote>
  • Reply 3 of 6
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    but if I use an AGP 4x card in an 2x slot, are there big slowdowns ?
  • Reply 4 of 6
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    If a card can support AGP 4x it will likely perform better in an AGP 4x port than an AGP 2x port. AGP 4x provides 1GB/s of bandwidth, AGP 8x provides 2 GB/s and AGP 2x only provides 500 MB/s.



    Needless to say even assuming a Radeon 9700 can go into an AGP 2x port it is going to have a serious bottleneck in the bandwidth. It is really designed to take advantage of the full 2GB/s. That said the performance gains aren't linear.



    I would say probably Radeon 8500 or 9000 PRO is the best for an AGP 2x port.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    [quote]Originally posted by Telomar:

    <strong>I would say probably Radeon 8500 or 9000 PRO is the best for an AGP 2x port.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    thanks !
  • Reply 6 of 6
    tigerwoods99tigerwoods99 Posts: 2,633member
    Look on MacNN and go to the thread in the PowerMac section about flashing the Radeon 8500. Buy a PC version and flash it, they are going for around $100 right now.
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