Upgrade Question

[TinyGrasshopper]

I have a a bit of a retarded question. I have an old machine that doesn't support agp or ddr. my intention is to build a new one, but in the old one, i want have a memory and gfx upgrade. i want to to put the pci radeon 9200 into it. the video memory on the card is ddr even though the board itself doesn't support ddr, just regular sdram. would the card still work? i assume so but would it mean that the ddr would run at sdram speeds? if it does, how would that affect the card? indeed, what are the general effects of doing that if any at all?                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

The video card normally has a Super fast bus to communicate directly with the cpu [ AGP] but a PCI video card will be operating at the same speed as your RAM and system bus. So in this case you WILL be running that card at SDRAM Speeds .
   your best bet would be to buy a motherboard with an integrated Geforce 2/4 and 384-512mb of ram [ giving 128-256MB of DDR to the graphics card ] or buy a  motherboard that has slots for BOTH DDR and older ram [ but only one type can be used at once ] get a cheap new cpu [ if you have an ATHLON you can use it in the new board until you decide to uprade] and get an AGP graphics card which is MUCH faster than ANY pci version will ever be.
  Do not confuse PCI graphics cards with PCI-X graphics cards, PCI-X is an entirely NEW slot , faster than AGP 2 times , PCI operates at your system bus speed .
  An AGP geforce 2 will be faster than the PCI card, they go for less than 300 TT now                    

[TinyGrasshopper]

thanks                    

[richjob]

Sigh. PCI bus runs at 33 mhz.  1 x AGP runs at 66x.

REAL TERMS it's about a 10% difference in overall system speed.  

I figure that you could use your Radeon 9200 PCI without fear.  Once your non-AGP motherboard supports a nice fast CPU.  If you're talking something like a 350 mhz Pentium II, keep the existing card.                    

[TriniXaeno]

you already own the radeon 9200 pci?

If not, ditch it...and go with an agp class board...they are dog cheap nowadays...and offer good performance, no...excellent performance.

Sell the old parts to rustle up enough dough for the upgrade. Don't let them keep your PC in the stone age.                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

AGP cards are HELLUVA LOT FASTER THAN PCI CARDS because the manufacturers tend to put second rate stuff on PCI cards. MAC games tend to use open gl because  it uses alot less CPU to VCARD bus bandwidth than DirectX , therefore it runs faster  on the PCI only MAC .


   NEVER try to update a   machine that  is  THAT far behind if you are a gamer,  eventually it will become hard to find parts etc. ,                    

[richjob]

Well, I was jusrt saying...

Not that anyone has done any empirical testing...                    

[TriniXaeno]

I have....and the PCI part was about 40 - 50% slower.

Tested mx440 pci vs agp 440