Question Re: 2x AGP vs 4x AGP

leonisleonis
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I am thinking about getting the Radeon 8500 card.



It says it's compatible with 2x and 4x AGP slots



I am wondering....my DP 500 only comes with 2x AGP slot. Will there be any big impact on performance? How much slower than when the card is on the 4x slot?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    majormattmajormatt Posts: 1,077member
    Thats hard to say.



    It depends if your games/applications use SMP, I heard in most cases the G4 is the limiting factor, not AGP 2X or the video card.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    thealmightybabarammthealmightybabaramm Posts: 69member
    Your Radeon 8500 (if you get it) won't be held back more than 2-3% if that by the 2x vs. 4x AGP slot.



    What will hurt the card much more than the AGP slot is your slow computer, relative to the current highend Macs.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    enderender Posts: 353member
    The only way you'll push that card to something even resembling a limit is if you run your games at 1600 x 1200. At higher resolutions, the CPU doesn't do any more work, but the graphics card works a lot harder to push that many pixels.



    That said, I have a G4/500 DP and I use the original Radeon 32 MB DDR (with AGP, I found one left at some mac store and I replaced my Rage 128 with it).



    The original Radeon seems to be the perfect match for this system. It doesn't have the huge power that some of the new cards have, but at 1280 x 1024 it feels like both the system and the card are getting a good workout.



    I get 50 fps solid in Red Faction (1024 x 768 is the top resolution in that game), 25-45 fps in Giants (which uses both processors 100% -- go OmniGroup!), and even 25-35 fps in Sacrifice (the biggest resource hog I've ever seen).



    The Radeon is a good card for this system and it won't put such a huge dent in your pocket.



    -Ender
  • Reply 4 of 4
    fobiefobie Posts: 216member
    Well, 2x AGP can handle 544MB/sec and 4x AGP 1066MB/sec.



    About the Radeon 8500 card, its not the same as the card Ender is useing. The 8500 is the new top end card and will peform much better. I dont know how good on your computer but still better I guess.
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