Video Card Upgrade Complexities...

[eos_6402]

I can't get a straight answer from the stores, so Im tryin here. I am upgrading my video card, and wish to avoid incompatabilities.

What is the difference between 333MHz and 400MHz?? what about the AGP 4X/8X??

Im looking to upgrade from 64MB to 256MB Video Card...

My Sys Specs

Supermicro P3TDDE Pentium III 1.26 Duals, ATX, 4GB SDRAM, 133MHz FSB
ATI Radeon 7200 Divo
SB Live 5.1
Maxtor 80 GB HD
Seagate 120 GB HD
no DVD

I'm running Win 2000 Prof with Good ol Red Hat on the Secondary

 

[Imp]

The difference between 333Mhz and 400Mhz is predictably 67Mhz, but this is in reference to your RAM and does not effect your graphics card at all, as for 4x and 8x agp this does have a large influence on your choice of GFX card (4x having half the data transfer rate of 8x). If your Motherboard is only capable of 4x agp and you buy a 8x gfx card then you are going to get a bottleneck which effect the performance of gfx data transfer which is only really noticable if you are an avid gamer. You must first find out if your motherboard is 4x or 8x by reading your motherboard manual or visiting your motherboard manufacturers website and then make a decision on what card to buy. http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/P3/VIA/P3TDDE.cfm
from what i can see your motherboard only supports 4x agp and therefore putting a 8x card in this machine would mean that you would have to set the card to 4x agp meaning that you would not get the full performance from any card that you were going to purchase, therefore if i were you i would not go out and spend a silly ammount of cash on high end GFX card but would opt for something along the lines of a 9800se (there no point in spending money on a card that you are not going to get the full benefit from)unless you also plan on upgrading your motherboard in the near future and then i would probably go for a 9800pro or 9800xt, both of which are excellent cards!

 

[waterspanker]

so what card did you end up going with?

so what card did you end up going with?

just curious