Mobo with both AGP and PCI-E slots

[SSFT]

Weren't really designed with AGP in mind.

I happen to own one of these motherboards, and I had a 6800gt (agp). My processor is an AMD64 3500. My bro's computer has an AGP board, and a 6800gt, and his processor is an AMD64 1600.

Believe it or not, he was getting better performance in games, even though his processor has half the power of mine. Thing is, My mobo was forcing AGP through a PCI interface, which I just recently found out. I recently bought a Nvidia 7900gt (PCI-E), but I decided to do a test first. I did the Lost Coast stress Test, and got an average of 60fps. I then switched out my 6800gt with the 7900gt, did the test, and got a whopping 148fps.

Remember, just because it looks like your mobo can do both, doesn't mean it can. Those boards that have both were designed for PCI-E. So the point of this post is to alert those who might happen to have a board like mine, and an AGP card. If you do, you might experience stuttering in game video and sound (such as the Valve logo video not playing at game startup) and less performance than what is expected.

For the longest time I couldn't fathom why my brother's cruddy comp was out performing mine.

PS

The 7900gt was CHEAP! I got it online for $309 brand new!

For a new top-of-the-line card, I would expect it to cost around $600, like the 7800gt's.

I had to buy it online because no stores around my area carry it. Weird huh?

 

[|Overlord|]

7900 series is mostly sold out in a lot of palces or they don't have stock. It depends on the mainboard vendor. Asrock make such products, it won't happen on all products of the same type, though it's just mostly asrock that I see making such products. Just because this one thing happens doesn't mean it's the boards fault, the game may have changed the settings when you switched cards, there could be something you could set in the bios to correct this issue or you could update the mainboard bios, or you may have to switch a jumper.

 

[DiebytheSword]

There was always alot of bad buzz about the ASRock dual AGP/PCI-E mobo. It seemed to be driver related, and ASRock never did much to fix it for everyone.

 

[Devion]

The board(Socket 939 one) is 939Dual-SATA2. I'm using an AGP card and it works PERFECTLY.
So it is prolly just you with this problem.

Also a bios flash is recommended.(The new flashes can be run via Windows instead of the old floppy way)