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AGP/PCI?

Started by u235 Dec 15, 2005 at 3:33 PM 1 replies 500+ views

Original Post

Dec 15, 2005 at 3:33 PM

I am looking to get a new graphics card but I have a quick question. The graphics card I was looking at is the ATI Radeon 9550. But it comes in another flavor, the 9250. The 9550 is for PCI and the 9250 is for AGP. My current card is PCI but I want the 9250 because of its better feature set. Namely, the 9250 supports DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.0 while the 9550 supports only DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.4. Does the fact that my current card is PCI mean that I can only use PCI cards? If so, any recommendations? If not, how do I tell if I have an AGP slot on my computer? Thanks. -AJ

Pipo DeClown

Dec 15, 2005 at 3:40 PM

Look up what Mainboard/Motherboard your system uses?

M2tM

Dec 15, 2005 at 3:42 PM

Either you know what kind of motherboard you have and can look it up on the net... Or, a quicker method would be to crack open your computer case and just look.

AGP slots are typically brown and should generally reside just above your regular PCI slots. AGP slots are set off (further in) than regular PCI slots are. Here's an image:
AGP Slot

No, your fast PCI slot for graphics cards will not accept an agp card, it's very doubtful you have both the slot required for your current card and an unused AGP slot in addition to that. You'd need a new motherboard for the AGP card which would be silly to do because AGP is being replaced by the newer standard anyway. If you were considering buying a new motherboard to support the graphics card, why not just invest that money IN the graphics card?

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