Advice on which to get. GF2MX AGP or GF4MX PCI card?

[Setaseeker]

need some advice asap please...

My video card went out on me last night and i'm stuck on a pretty slow ATi Radeon sdr pci card. Now around here my choice is rather limited... and somewhat crappy at that. Now here is where I need your advice. I have a choice from two cards. I can either purchase a Abit Silaro Geforce 2 MX original or a Geforce 4 MX 420. Now normally I would just go for the GF4, but it is PCI.... I don't know why they only have PCI in the GF4, but they do. The GF2 is AGP. What would you do in my situation? Will the PCI cripple the MX 420's performance or will I not see too much of a difference? TIA

 

[Arris]

Check out at what speed that your AGP runs at.
Depending on the age of your board it could be 1 x, 2 x or 4 x.
AGP port generally runs at 44Mhz where as the PCI ports run at 33Mhz. If your board only supports AGP 1X then its probably not going to be that much of a performance deficit between PCI and AGP. The Geforce MX cards are usually bandwidth limited in comparison to the rest of the range so I don't think its all that big and issue.

From www.webopedia.com:

PCI is a 64-bit bus, though it is usually implemented as a 32-bit bus. It can run at clock speeds of 33 or 66 MHz. At 32 bits and 33 MHz, it yields a throughput rate of 133 MBps.

AGP:- 1X is 266 MBps, 2X is 533 MBps; and 4X provides 1.07 GBps.

Here is a good TomsHardware article about the performance differences between AGP and PCI...

Hope this is of some help

 

[JAV]

Arris,

Thanks, you just saved me from buying an AGP motherboard. Now if I can convince nVidia to make a PCI GF4 Ti4200 ... :grinthumb [Better yet: a PCI VPU from 3d Labs/Creative ]

PCI isn't standing still either. 66mhz is the 2.1 standard (as on my VisionTek GF2 MX400) & there is a 2.3 version @: http://www.pcisig.com/home

Now who was it that was laughing about PCI cards ???

 

[Top_gun]

soon their will be AGPx8 motherboards

 

[Arris]

Well I wouldn't not buy an AGP compatible motherboard just because of what I posted. Its the accepted standard. If you have a non-AGP board, fair enough, but if you are considering buying a new board for reasons other than getting AGP then I would still get one with an AGP slot. And as Top_Gun says AGP 8X is starting to be seen on new motherboards coming out, which should smoke PCI graphics no matter what standard PCI is raised to.
Though I don't think I would upgrade my motherboard for the sole reason of getting AGP