AGP 4x vs. 8x performance?

Question

If I had two systems set up side by side exactly the same except one motherboard was a slightly later model that supported AGP 8x, and the other only went up to 4x, with an identical card, how noticeable do you think the performance increase with the 8x over the 4x would be?

wow that made no sense. there's no 16x agp, and i'm talking using an identical card, obviously a much much more expensive card on an 8x agp interface is going to perform better than a budget pcie card.

So you typed a 4 page essay and didn't answer the question...good job. I said with identical video cards, as in, the same. One running on a motherboard at 4x, one at 8x, it doesn't even need to be a different model motherboard, just one limited to 4x in bios, and one running at 8x.... Form factor as mentioned in the beginning doesn't come in to play, as they're identical systems, and a 4x bus is a 4x bus, and an 8x bus is an 8x bus, regardless of the form factor of the card or the voltage it's running at. Can someone skip the trying to make yourself look smart and answer a simple question of what's the noticeable difference between an effective 266mhz video bus vs. an effective 533mhz video bus on otherwise identical equipment?

Answer 1

Hi

Answer 2

Hi Y'all.
I dont think you can have two identical motherboards with two different AGP slots, since the 4x and the 8X chipsets are totally different, and the motherboard chips and the architectures would all be upgraded to match the newer 8X speeds.
What you have envisioned would not give a true representation
of the single difference in 8x to 4x on a particular card, since,
you would necessarily be using two totaly different motherboards - by your own definition.
The 8x board would allow the newer CPU's, the newer frontside bus speeds, the newer ram speeds and configurations, to go along with the newer 8X format of the AGP slot.
In a scientific experiment, you can only change ONE variable at a time, and here, you would be changing a dozen variables all at once, and therefore arrive at an unkown conclusion.
Just re- writing the BIOS itself can have HUGE differences on the performance of the entire computer... BIOS upgrades are issued monthly, and do make huge differences on many of the machines that I have.
Other than that, I would guess that very similar motherboards, one with 4x and one with 8x would indicate more performance on the 8X bus, but... in a great many reviews on a great many motherboards and video cards, I have seen where the gamers report to set the 8x down to 4x to regain performance and stability, even though both the motherboard and the video card are 8x compliant.
You are probably best off to read actual benchmarks on a specific motherboard and graphic card combo, and compare the reviews. And as to your comment that an expensive card is better than a cheaper card - don't hold your breath - sometimes the cheapo card is much better designed and outperfoms the highly advertised, and much more expensive model ! - only the benchmarks tell the truth !
good luck !

Answer 3

4 and 8 will not be a big deal but it will have difference. I have used all sorts from PCI , AGP 4x and 8x and 16x Video cards. Sometimes 8x cards can be better then 16x same with 4x. But overall the difference is plentiful.

Answer 4

make sure again, PCI teach playing playing cards run at 16x and AGP playing playing cards run at 8x. it must be an AGP slot. If its a PCIExpress card operating at 8x then the finest performance of the cad will be restricted. video games will run slow using very last bandwidth help. I help you to make certain for the dissimilar Motherboard with 16x specification.

Answer 5

no, no noticeable difference because if it is an identical card on both motherboards, it's going to be the card that determines the speed in a faster AGP slot, but the only way to be sureyyy is to test it...

Answer 6

I suppose she was referring to PCI Express which is 16x, but anyway there would probably be a performance difference, however I don't think it would be that noticable. If you looked at the actual bandwidth numbers, it would look like a big difference, but probably not that noticable to the naked eye.