AGP - 4x bottleneck?

[Vee]

Now Ive done as much searching and reading as I could to try to keep this from being too ignorant a question.. But.

My motherboard has AGP 4x. I have seen several sites claim that 8x is the standard for video cards now. Does this mean if I get a card that wants to use 8x it will only run at half its available speed? Or is the difference between running 4x and 8x negligable (Ive noticed a few people have 8x compatibility run at 4x to avoid lockups/instability?)

PS: The card I will most likely get is a radeon 9600 or slightly above. (ie not strapped for cash but not fanatical gamer)


Thanks in advance,

Val.

 

[young&wild]

IMHO, In the real world, running a card at 4X besides 8x wont have a little or no degradation in terms of performance. Why? This is because there not many or no games at all that can make full use of the 8x bandwidth. If I were in your situation, I will still continue to keep the 4x motherboard and upgrade to Radeon 9600 without any hesitation.

 

[Vee]

I was hoping to run dawn of war (once i upgrade ram to 512 as well) I doubt Ill be going any higher performance wise than this for quite some time..


Thanks,

V