2xAGP vs. 4xAGP

[Buggeroo]

Hi

I was just wondering, how much faster than 2xAGP is 4xAGP really, in terms of performance. I now run a Geforce 2 MX400 on 2xAGP with an AMD K6-2 500 Mhz CPU. If hypothetically it was running at 4xAGP, how great an increase in performance would I get?

 

[kelsen]

Virtually none; it would be potentially noticeable only in a select few graphics-intensive games. This doesn't mean that 4XAGP is something to disdain. It will be more useful as the AGP bus becomes stressed by more applications. But at the moment, the differences are trivial.


RFT!!!
Dave Kelsen.
Honk if you've never seen an Uzi fired from a car window.

 

[Garyeag]

Same as above.
In theory it is double. But with comps the speed is determined by the slowest device. So if it comes out of the AGP bus at 66mhz or whatever it will have to go along another bus at 33 and so on. There are bottlenecks everywhere.
I've used both, 2x and 4x on agp and haven't noticed any difference. Ditto PCI and AGP. Unless you are a gamer most applications can run at full pelt using the most basic configurations. Gary

 

[Out0fOrder]

Hello,
Theoretically, the bandwidth should be increased the more X rating you go. And this is the case, however, your system will hit a bottleneck elsewhere. Most likely your Front Side Bus will only operate at 100mhz on your system, if that (more likely 66mhz).
Most modern systems, which have 266Mhz Front Side Busses and DDR memory running at similar speeds will gain FPS (frames per second) rates dramatically from systems that have bottlenecks.
But In Any Case... In order to upgrade your system, you would need to buy a new motherboard (for an AGP 4x slot), new CPU (for the new Motherboard), and RAM (for the new motherboard). You'll most likely end up buying a new system all together.

Hope this NFO Helped,
-Out0fOrder

 

[cdogg]

AGP 2X allows for a maximum bandwidth of 528 MB/sec. AGP 4X doubles that to 1056MB/sec. When the technology first became available, there weren't any graphic intensive programs on the market that could take "real" advantage of the extra bandwidth. This was mainly because of greater bottlenecks in the system. Most FSB speeds were only 66 MHz at the time.

Today however, the advances to 266 MHz FSB and 400 MHz FSB and faster memory (DDR and RDRAM) have yielded better performance from AGP 4X.

* you would see a huge difference on an AMD 1.4 GHZ system (266 FSB, PC2400 DDR RAM, and GeForce 3) if you were to set the multiplier of the AGP bus down to 2x from 4x on games like Quake III.

on your system however, having 4x probably wouldn't make much difference...