PCI Vs AGP

Hi,

I bought a piece of junk pc, but it was only $25 for a celeron
2.66 ghz with dvd burner, 512mb ram, card reader for every known card
120gb hard disk (turned out to be 40 though), all in all a great deal.
Like I said it's a POS computer by emachines with integrated video
with an intel 82845G pci video with 8mb shared memory. I'm not really
into 3d games too much but like to play once in a while. I would like
to replace the POS on board video, but without AGP. Now, I have
somewhere in my possession a 16mb banshee video card which I'm pretty
sure is PCI (I don't know where it is at the moment) and I am
considering a low end replacement. MY choices are:
The banshee card (if it's pci) FREE
I can't find any comparisons between the banshee and the onboard
video. Would the banshee be faster? A LOT?

A geforce 4 mx 400 series pci 64mb $34
a Raidon 9250 PCI 128mb card $50

Would these low-end cards be hampered by the PCI bus instead of AGP?
I was under the impression that the biggest advantage of an AGP card
is for storing textures in main system ram and then having a high
speed data path between the card and system ram. With today's large
amounts of memory on board the card, that would seem to be a moot
point. In any event, I'm assuming that in order for the PCI bus to
become the bottleneck you would need a fast really fast video card and
that the above mentioned chips would have almost no increase in AGP
over PCI, while still being SUBSTANTIALLY faster than what is on board
(the intel ). Any advise would be appreciated.

Chris


If life seems jolly rotten
There's spmething you've forgotten
and thats to laugh and smile and dance and sing!

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Chris <christo9.DeleteThis@notalotofunwanted.aol.com> wrote:
> Hi,

> I bought a piece of junk pc, but it was only $25 for a celeron
> 2.66 ghz with dvd burner, 512mb ram, card reader for every known card
> 120gb hard disk (turned out to be 40 though), all in all a great deal.
> Like I said it's a POS computer by emachines with integrated video
> with an intel 82845G pci video with 8mb shared memory. I'm not really
> into 3d games too much but like to play once in a while. I would like
> to replace the POS on board video, but without AGP. Now, I have
> somewhere in my possession a 16mb banshee video card which I'm pretty
> sure is PCI (I don't know where it is at the moment) and I am
> considering a low end replacement. MY choices are:
> The banshee card (if it's pci) FREE
> I can't find any comparisons between the banshee and the onboard
> video. Would the banshee be faster? A LOT?

> A geforce 4 mx 400 series pci 64mb $34
> a Raidon 9250 PCI 128mb card $50

> Would these low-end cards be hampered by the PCI bus instead of AGP?

Yes.

> I was under the impression that the biggest advantage of an AGP card
> is for storing textures in main system ram and then having a high
> speed data path between the card and system ram. With today's large
> amounts of memory on board the card, that would seem to be a moot
> point.

The amount of textures commonly used is larger than the amount of
memory on your cards (or most/all). So textures have to frequently be
moved into the card.

> In any event, I'm assuming that in order for the PCI bus to
> become the bottleneck you would need a fast really fast video card and
> that the above mentioned chips would have almost no increase in AGP
> over PCI, while still being SUBSTANTIALLY faster than what is on board
> (the intel ). Any advise would be appreciated.

Depends on the games you want to play. WoW in 800x600 with miminal
details probably runns smooth. A current shooter is very likely a lost
cause, i.e. unplayable.

Arno