Re: AGP vs PCI-E - how big is the difference?

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt "JAD" <john
doe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


<btcruz@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1175008659.977157.197190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Here's my recent AGP experience:

I have an older Aopen AK86-L mobo with an Athlon XP 64 3200+ (754
pin), 1GB of Corsair XMS CAS2 memory and a Radeon 9800Pro vid
card....this box has been absolutely rock solid since I built it
several years ago. My old Samsung 19" CRT monitor finally gave up the
ghost and I decided to finally get into the modern world and upgrade
to a widescreen LCD. The problem was I needed a new video card to
drive it so I opted to try one of the newer AGP cards and that's where
the nightmare began.

The first card was a Radeon X1650Pro (512MB of DDR2 memory). Upon
initial install, I could get to the desktop in VGA mode, but any
change of resolution and the screeen would go blank with no video
signal. So, I set out to update every driver I could. I went to
Aopen's site and got the latest BIOS for the board and flashed it,
updated the Catalyst drivers, etc. This seemed to fix the issues as I
was now running my desktop at 1440x900 resolution (native res for my
19" monitor). Thought things would be fine until I tried to run some
games. Anyhting 3D would cause the screen to go blank again.

After much more futzing aroud with this card I took it back and
exchanged it for a Radeon X1600XT (256MB of DDR3 memory and a lot
higher clock rates than the XX50 line of cards). The 1600XT did
marginally better as I was able to actually launch and play games and
it too would go blank. There was no pattern to how long it would
last, sometimes it would lock up or blank out immediately upon
launching a game, or sometimes it would go 10, 15, 20 minutes or
more. Again, driver updates, tweaks, reading forums, all manner of
fixes I could find to no avail. When it did work, the frame rates
were terrible and I had to play all games at the lowest settings just
to make it managable.

I took this card back and decided to try an Nvidia card. I got a
7600GS AGP card and took it home and installed it. Couldn't get any
video out of it at all, not even to the desktop in forced VGA mode. I
even tried switching the monitor cable from digital to analog, no
luck.

Took this card back and just reinstalled my old Radeon 9800Pro (so I
could at least check e-mail, etc) until I figured out what to do. I
discovered on some forums that several other folks have had similar
issues recently with other motherboards as well.

Then I started looking on newegg and found a great deal. For only $65
more than the price of those AGP video cards alone, I got a Foxconn
nforce 4 SLI motherboard, Athlon 64 4000+ (939 pin) CPU and an Nvidia
7900GS video card (PCI Express 16x)!!!!!! I just reused my old
Corsair PC3200 memory (and am also now able to run them at max timings
of 2-3-3-6!) Voila!! Now I play World of Warcraft at max settings,
Nvidia's 2Q anti-aliasing setting, max anisotropic filtering (16x),
and all 3D set to maximum quality at 1440x900 resolution an never go
below 60 FPS!!!!

So, although the PCIE bus may not be any faster than the old 8x AGP
bus (yet), it seems some of the older AGP based mobos aren't working
well with the new AGP cards. If my personal experience is any
indicator, save yourself the headaches and upgrade the mobo, processor
and video card all at once.

I went with the 939 pin setup because I am on a very limited budget
and needed to be able to reuse my memory. The AM2 socket boards and
the newer dual core CPU's use DDR2 memory, so that was an extra
expense I could not afford right now. I was worried the Athlon 4000
and 7900GS would still be marginal on the frame rates, but it sure was
a nice surprise to see it isn't! This thing works very well and this
was the first system I've ever built that started right up without a
hiccup when everything was installed and powered on for the first
time. Very little setup/tweaking was required to get max
performance. I'm very impressed with the Foxconn board and even more
so when I consider how cheap this overall upgrade was.



this whole story sounds like a typical 'driver' issue. My first LCD was powered by a 8600
AIW ATI 128 AGP4 card 1600x1200

I had to download brand new drivers for my new LCD screen.
The drivers even from six months ago wouldn't support 1680x1050.
Then, of course, we have the problem with Win-XP "Safe Mode" not
supporting LCD screens. A real PITA, if something goes wrong, the
system dies, and you want to fix things.

(XP assumes that any monitor will support VGA at 85hz ... LCD screens
*don't*. The problem is: You can select pure VGA from the F8 prompt, OR
"Safe Mode"; but not both. And, if things die, you can't get to the
msconfig utility which allows setting both, without being in Windows
first. Yes, if you have special tools and know what you're doing, you
CAN edit the BOOT.INI file manually ... But again that usually takes
being able to boot Windows first ... Catch-22. Especially since you
need Windows XP running to access the NTFS file-system. A "boot disk"
is no bloody help at all.)

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