Just a quicky.. Looking to buy the best AGP card that will work in an AGPx2 slot. I will probably have to buy a used card as this specification is not manufacturered anymore? I know that the x2 interface will be a bottleneck, but it's something I will have to live with! Any suggestions? .....preferrably nVidia EDIT: I am still a little confused with the AGP standards! Is this correct: AGP1.0 =x1 AGP2.0 =x2/x4 AGP3.0 =x4/x8 And if this is correct, why does my motherboard only support AGPx2 and not AGPx4?
Just been looking at a Hercules Prophet Ultra 2 64MB that uses a Geforce2 Ultra chipset. Is this the best I am going to get on an x2 interface?
Most likely. AGP 2x is pretty dang old, so I may not remember correctly, but I believe the GeForce 3 series was AGP 4x/8x---although I could be wrong on this one. In short, yes, the GF2 Ultra will work, but I'm not 100% sure that it's the fastest thing you can put in.
I've been reading that AGP1.0 is x1 and x2, whereas AGP2.0 is x2 and x4. Therefore my motherboard has an AGP 1.0 slot and not a 2.0 slot! So my question would be, can I run an AGP2.0 card in an AGP1.0 slot? EDIT: Actually I think I am running an AGP2.0 already: A Geforce2 MX400 - is this AGP2.0? How much of a performance increase would I get upgrading the MX 32MB for an Ultra 64MB?
Unless your running a very, very slow CPU (like a Celeron 300 w/o cache), you should see quite an improvement. It's like comparing a 6200TC and a 6800 Ultra...it's a huge difference. AGP 2.0 cards are backwards compatible with AGP 1.0 slots. AGP 3.0 is backwards compatible with AGP 2.0, but not 1.0, due to not supporting the voltages.
And how about power consumption? Will the Geforce2 Ultra 64MB require much more power then the Geforce2 MX400 32MB? The reason I ask is because my poor 235W Sparkle PSU already has a lot to deal with hah:
Sparkle is a decent brand and all these cards are pretty low power as there's not that many transistors and what not. My suggestion is the ATI 9250. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814129045 I know you can't use newegg but hopefully you can find the same card on a European site. Good luck man.
I didn't realise you could buy a 128MB card with an AGP x2/x4 interface! I searched high and low for a UK seller that stocked that card, but I couldn't find it anywhere. It seems that Newegg are the only company that has it! As a result, I won the Geforce2 Ultra on eBay for about £7! I think that's quite a bargain! Do you think that the Geforce2 Ultra will be good enough to run Vista's aero glass graphics engine?
For 7 pounds any gfx card is a steal! Nice one mate. But since it's not a DX9 card I don't think you'll be able to enable too many bells and whistles.
I was having a look at the latest Forceware drivers today. I noticed that the Geforce2 MX is still supported, yet the Geforce2 Ultra that I have just bought is not! :x: I thought the Ultra was the newer card? Does anyone have an explanation for this? hah:
Well to be honest I hadn't even heard of it untill this thread so I suspect that either the GeForce 2MX uses the same forceware version as the Ultra or it just wasn't a popular card and the drivers were discontinued for some weird reason.
The Ultra arrived in the post today I've upgraded my video card, and downgraded my nVidia drivers That sounds weird doesn't it! Why nVidia still support the budget MX and not the Ultra is beyond me... I've played a few PSX games on it through ePSXe, and it works a treat!
ePSXe is probably the best PSX emulator available. With a decent enough video card, you can make the graphics look better then what the PSX can produce! Wip3out looks absolutely amazing through ePSXe. I would put it on a par with PS2 graphics! I use loads of effects like smoothing for example, and it looks pixal perfect. On a side note, ePSXe is also available for Linux but I can't get it to work properly. Oh well...
