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Date:	Fri, 21 May 2004 17:10:16 PDT7
From:	Tom Brown <thombrown@san.rr.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: AGP card question

Content Type: text/plain

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J. R. Fox wrote:
> At the present time, I am still using (in the desktop system) an older
> ASUS main board, which has a 2X AGP slot in it, with a Matrox G400
> card that has 32mb. on board. From reading some newsgroup messages
> via the Deja search -- assuming the posters were correct, and that I
> understood them -- I gather that there are some latter day video cards
> that can be backwards-compatible with the older slot. Care must be
> taken to be sure that the voltages are compatible as well, less sizzle
> & smoke ensue. Obviously, a 2X slot is never going to perform at
> better than 2X. OTOH, one poster said, a great deal of the video
> bandwidth stuff happens within the card itself. So, if the
> compatibility angle is covered, I guess the question becomes, 'How
> much of a video performance boost -- if any -- might be realized from
> a Radeon or GeForce type card that has four times the onboard memory
> of my older Matrox card ? ' I think Jerry said that prices on some of
> these 128 meg. Radeon cards had fallen to around the $75. level.
>
> Also, does the above have any bearing re OS/2 | eCS ?

I am certainly no expert on this, but from what I understand, most of
the extra speed, memory, etc. that is present in the current video cards
is most useful if you are playing high performance games, especially
online or at LAN parties and such. I read Maximum PC magazine, mostly to
learn about the bleeding edge hardware that they review as soon as it
rears it's head. The June, 2004 issue contains "Our Most Complete
Videocard Technology Guide - EVER." You might want to grab a copy for
educational purposes. :-)

If you are like me and 1) don't play extreme games and 2) don't run
Windoze, the 8X AGP stuff is probably vast overkill. My Matrox MGA-450
does just fine with the SciTech SNAP drivers.

HTH

--
Tom Brown
thombrown at san dot rr dot com
Member SCOUG, V.O.I.C.E. & SDAA
running eComStation GA + FP 3
eCS system uptime is 0 days 00:42 hours

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