Hello,

I intend to upgrade my videocard to Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro.

My ASUS P4E-T motherboard manual says:

"Features the Intel 850 chipset with support for AGP 4X Pro Mode (1.5V only)"

"This motherboard provides an accelerated graphics port (AGP PRO)..."

"IMPORTANT: Only 1.5V AGP cards are supported..."

Can the card work with my motherboard, any possible problem?

T.S.LIM

You have a motherboard with a 4X AGP slot.

The 9600 Pro is a 4X/8X AGP card.

Hmmm, the 9600 Pro should be compatible with your motherboard.

Just in case you are not aware of.

AGP 4X and AGP 8x cards run on the same voltage which is 1.5volts. There is no whatsoever significant difference between the two performance wise.

In other words, you are getting a thumb up for the upgrade. :grinthumb

Thanks for the reply.

To young&wild:
I am very curious, why no significant diff in performance between 4x and 8x. (I assume you means the card performance will be almost the same either running under Agp4x or Agp8x mode)
Is your claim based only on benchmark result? Is there any article or guide which reasons that out?

T.S.LIM

Here's an article you can read.

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2002q4/gf4-8x/index.x?pg=2

The difference between AGP8x + AGP4x is the bandwidth it provides (8x doubling 4x obviously) its not actually a speed difference so from game to game etc.. the difference isnt always noticable.

Thanks young&wild for the link.

It is interesting to find that at low resolution AGP 8X can even hurt performance!

It looks like the tests are based on early AGP 8X cards, may be newer cards can use the AGP 8X in a better way and reverse the situation...

t.s.lim

I strongly agree. You cant go wrong with that. To my understanding, most of the textures are passed via card memory, AGP is the last resort.