AGP and upgrades

[Cuthroat]

If I have an older Athlon XP 1800 and wanted to upgrade my system by simply upgrading the processor and video card what are my options?

I think the board supports all the way to 2800 xp


My biggest question is I have a geforce 3 4200ti 64mb vid card.
Its in the AGP slot and I believe that there are alot of versions of AGP. AGP 4x 8x 16x??

So if I found a vid card to upgrade to can I do it? Do I have to have a vid card that is AGP 1x or can I put a newer Vid Card with AGP 12x in the slot?

Thanks as always you guys know your stuff..

 

[aaronkupen]

woah woah woah hold on. To my knowledge there is no AGP 12x or 16x. You are getting it confused with PCI express 16. AGP cards are backwards compatable, but you wont get the same performace, for instance you could put an agp8x into an agp4x but you would suffer in performanec somewhat.

 

[TheMajor]

You should use a program like Everest Home Edition to check wich version of AGP your motherboard AND graphics card support.

If your motherboard supports AGP 4x I think it is still worth getting a slightly better card. If it supports AGP 8x it is definetaly worth getting something faster.

 

[quest1on]

whats the difference tho i heard i posted a topic sorta like this and some guy said how agpx4/x8 isnt a really big difference for gaming the x8 might give u like 0.5 - 1 fps of a difference wen u play a game??

 

[Mr_Threepwood]

It depends what card you have, faster AGP cards will suffer more from being in a lower AGP slot. 8x is the highest, theres also 4x, 2x, and 1x. Agp cards work in any slot as far as I know, I know forsure 8x cards work in 4x slots. With your pc though there's no point getting a high end AGP card. A good upgrade would be a 9600,9800 type card from ATI, or a 6600GT from nvidia (will have different manufactureres, EVGA or BFG are best IMO).

 

[PP Mguire]

OK lets get this clear. First off what motherboard do you have and how much ram do you have? From there we will decide what video card to get. Second off 4x/8x cards WILL NOT work in 2x slots. If you have a higher AthlonXP processor then you will most likely have a 8x slot. From there i will continue to say that if its model name is TI4200 then you have a Geforce4 card, not 3. If its a 4 then i will conclude that its 8x agp which in favor turns me to suggest a 2500+ AthlonXP and a 6600GT. Thank you and good night.

 

[Cuthroat]

Thank you p.p Mguire.. Im sorry I guess I wasnt completely accurate..

I have an Athlon XP 1800, no idea what the MB is or what it supports. Its an Emachine.

I have 768mb of ram... one 256 stick that came with the puter and a 512 stick I put in.

Your right I do have a geforce 4 ti 4200... not a geforce 3

Im sure I can figure out how high I can take the processor by looking at the emachines site.

The vid card fan just started screaming and I disconnected it, so im wondering if I can just upgrade the processor and the vid card and am not sure about AGP compatibiity. I dont want to buy a new AGP vid card and not have it work?

Appreciate all your comments in helping me with this dilema.

 

[Cuthroat]

BTW everest has gotten out of the freeware market and only selling their product now.

 

[chevytrucknut]

I would upgrade to a cheap mobo that supports Athlon 64, then get a cheap CPU that you can OC, if you want. It's really not that much more expensive, and even though you may not be running any high-end stuff, it could do way better than what you have now

 

[PoisonPorkchop]

BTW everest has gotten out of the freeware market and only selling their product now.

Really? That's the first I heard of it. Just download an older version. try download.com