AGP and PCI-e on one motherboard?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
You missed the point.

The bandwidth problems with the 775 socket board are not the big problems, running in PCI mode is one of the big ones, and as Crashman points out:

"3.3V compatible cards have the forward voltage key, 1.5V compatible cards have the rear voltage key, 8x/4x/2x and 4x/2x cards have both keys. But these crappy PCI to AGP implementations often use an AGP Universal Slot, so that cards that don't work will still fit."
Click to expand...

So its only an issue of making sure you buy a card that can take the voltage from that socket, not too big an issue surely?
 
the guy already has a card that will work in the socket.

3.3v cards, wasnt that like the diamond viper days. I mean c'mon thats a ridiculous arguement.
 
yeh i know. i was agreeing with you :)
Click to expand...

I'm using the 775, and I've got no problems with the video solution, the non-existent OC ability is a minor issue, but possible SATA incompatabilities is a bigger issue, but the store is saying that I have had 3HDD's with the same faults and symptoms, so it may not be the board.

Its a board for a purpose, to upgrade via, on the way to something else.
 
yeh i know. i was agreeing with you :)
Click to expand...

I'm using the 775, and I've got no problems with the video solution, the non-existent OC ability is a minor issue, but possible SATA incompatabilities is a bigger issue, but the store is saying that I have had 3HDD's with the same faults and symptoms, so it may not be the board.

Its a board for a purpose, to upgrade via, on the way to something else.



The problem for the OP remains however the AGP slot is actually a VIA XGP slot which has stability and compatibility problems.

Since the OP needs a working AGP slot this board is not a good choice.

Many reviewers reported serious problems with the fake AGP slot on this board.
 
yeh i know. i was agreeing with you :)
Click to expand...

I'm using the 775, and I've got no problems with the video solution, the non-existent OC ability is a minor issue, but possible SATA incompatabilities is a bigger issue, but the store is saying that I have had 3HDD's with the same faults and symptoms, so it may not be the board.

Its a board for a purpose, to upgrade via, on the way to something else.



The problem for the OP remains however the AGP slot is actually a VIA XGP slot which has stability and compatibility problems.

Since the OP needs a working AGP slot this board is not a good choice.

Many reviewers reported serious problems with the fake AGP slot on this board.

So the problem is stability, and not the fact that the AGP slot is keyed badly as per crashmans post.

I must admit that I have not seen any reviews siting that as being a problem with that particular board. But I assume that they are out there somewhere.
 
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=245&num=11

Also several people are reporting DOA boards and stability issues.
Click to expand...

I want to say 'And..?' (but i'm not going to as it helps no-one) as that link doesn't really tally with DOA's yes they do claim poor AGP performance, but have heard other people complain about stability, however as a very budget board for a CPU that generally forces a premium onto boards it is worth considering that you get what you pay for, I'll pay for 90% of the performance at 30-40% of the price...

Shall we just say that we disagree on this one, and that there may be a perception of problems with this board, but perhaps no more than other boards, I've lost count of the number of articles I have read here regarding 'my P5B doesn't...' and yet people still push it as a solution.
 
You missed the point.

The bandwidth problems with the 775 socket board are not the big problems, running in PCI mode is one of the big ones, and as Crashman points out:

"3.3V compatible cards have the forward voltage key, 1.5V compatible cards have the rear voltage key, 8x/4x/2x and 4x/2x cards have both keys. But these crappy PCI to AGP implementations often use an AGP Universal Slot, so that cards that don't work will still fit."
Click to expand...



Indeed Crashman, bourgeoisdude and I agree that the AGP slot is crippled and has compatibility issues on the 775Dual ...

What a load of crap.
I have a 6800 ultra AGP on the 775dualVSTA and it works perfectly. In fact faster than it did on my old intel mobo.
 
the guy already has a card that will work in the socket.

3.3v cards, wasnt that like the diamond viper days. I mean c'mon thats a ridiculous arguement.
Click to expand...

I take it you rode the short bus to school. I remember a movie where a guy spent several hours explaining a simple problem to some special needs people...

OK, so let me explain this slowly, so you can understand:

1.) AGP 1.0, 2x transfers, 3.3V
2.) AGP 2.0, 4x transfers, 1.5V
3.) AGP 3.0, 8x transfers, 0.8V

All current AGP cards: 8x/4x compatible, 0.8V/1.5V
Few current AGP cards: 8x/4x/2x compatible, 0.8V/1.5V/3.3V

9700Pro: 8x/4x/2x (supports 3.3V signals in addition to 0.8V and 1.5V)
9600 Pro: 8x/4x (supports only 0.8V and 1.5V)
X800/X850 AGP: 8x/4x (supports only 0.8V and 1.5V)

GeForce FX series: 8x/4x/2x (supports 3.3V signals in addition to 0.8V and 1.5V)
GeForce 6/7 AGP series: 8x/4x (supports only 0.8V and 1.5V)

Now you see the problem. Most of the older cards work in these slots (even powerful ones like the 9700 Pro), Most of the newer cards won't (even the whimpy ones like the X1600 Pro AGP). 3.3V did not go away in the Diamond Viper days, for ATI it went away with the 9600 Pro, and for nVidia it went away when they dropped the native AGP interface (moving to on-card signal converters).
 
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=245&num=11

Also several people are reporting DOA boards and stability issues.
Click to expand...

I want to say 'And..?'

Shall we just say that we disagree on this one,

Look at the original post, the guy said he has an X1600 Pro AGP. I'm almost certain the RAILTO chip is NOT compatible with 3.3V signals, certainly his card isn't keyed for 3.3V. I've actually tested the 9600 Pro on a few non-native "agp" boards, they won't even POST.
 
the guy already has a card that will work in the socket.

3.3v cards, wasnt that like the diamond viper days. I mean c'mon thats a ridiculous arguement.
Click to expand...

I take it you rode the short bus to school. I remember a movie where a guy spent several hours explaining a simple problem to some special needs people...

OK, so let me explain this slowly, so you can understand:

1.) AGP 1.0, 2x transfers, 3.3V
2.) AGP 2.0, 4x transfers, 1.5V
3.) AGP 3.0, 8x transfers, 0.8V

All current AGP cards: 8x/4x compatible, 0.8V/1.5V
Few current AGP cards: 8x/4x/2x compatible, 0.8V/1.5V/3.3V

9700Pro: 8x/4x/2x (supports 3.3V signals in addition to 0.8V and 1.5V)
9600 Pro: 8x/4x (supports only 0.8V and 1.5V)
X800/X850 AGP: 8x/4x (supports only 0.8V and 1.5V)

GeForce FX series: 8x/4x/2x (supports 3.3V signals in addition to 0.8V and 1.5V)
GeForce 6/7 AGP series: 8x/4x (supports only 0.8V and 1.5V)

Now you see the problem. Most of the older cards work in these slots (even powerful ones like the 9700 Pro), Most of the newer cards won't (even the whimpy ones like the X1600 Pro AGP). 3.3V did not go away in the Diamond Viper days, for ATI it went away with the 9600 Pro, and for nVidia it went away when they dropped the native AGP interface (moving to on-card signal converters).

If you say that they will not work, why/how did my 6600GT work, or Nix's 6800.

I was willing to accept you saying that they would allow cards that should not work to be fitted and hence be damaged / cause damage. But to say that the provided slot will not allow x4/x8 cards to work is not supported by the evidence.
 
Perhaps nVidia's AGP to PCI-Express converter is 3.3V signal compatible (which makes it odd that they wouldn't put the 3.3V key notch on the card). I checked with ECS to find out why some card didn't work, and they confirmed it was a signal voltage issue.

As for not damaging cards, there's a protection circuit for that (at least on some boards).
 
well i had run the asrock 775dual-vsta with his x1600pro agp and was running fine for a month back then. the 3dmark benchmarks sometimes exceeded 8 point from the tomshardware vga chart compared to the x1600pro agp.

now, with the same motherboard, i'm using sapphire x1900xt pcie card and also running fine :)

i guess the 4x pcie is not a limit when playing 1024x768 or 1280x1024 resolution.

just my two cents, though..
 
So you're saying this particular board isn't using 3.3V signals common to so many other non-native AGP slots? That's a possibility too, one that would be easy to cross-reference using compatibility list.
 
i don't know much about voltage setting on the agp. the manual says to plug only a 1.5v agp card or something like that, not quiet recall.

i maybe wrong, but as far as i know, i've tried several agp & pcie cards (his 9200se agp, geforce mmx-440 agp, his x1600pro agp, asus geforce 6600 pcie, & sapphire x1900xt pcie), they all ran good.
 
oh i see. is the 2x compatible means the speed of the agp mode?

i recall this motherboard only supports for 4x and 8x agp mode. hehe 😀
 
oh i see. is the 2x compatible means the speed of the agp mode?

i recall this motherboard only supports for 4x and 8x agp mode. hehe 😀
Click to expand...

oh gawd, reminds me of a song by RATT...

It doesn't matter what they say is supposed to be compatible in theory, all that matters is what they've tested and found compatible in practice.

A slew of boards with non-native AGP slots are "requiring" 1.5v or 4x/8x cards, yet actually using 3.3V signals (which come from 2x comptibility).
 
Ok this is odd... ASRock has a PCI-E VGA compat list but I haven't found one for AGP yet...

http://www.asrock.com/support/VGA/show.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA

And you have to have BIOS P 1.40 or higher to use Core2 CPUs

http://www.asrock.com/support/CPU_Support/show.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA


I don't know if they tweaked the VSTA version of the board as far as the AGP goes.

Here's the chipset page:

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/p4-series/pt880_ultra/



Again the VIA AGP+PCI-E solution is known to have problems. Maybe they corrected some of them in the latest version of the board however I would strongly recommend 939Dual + 939 CPU + existing DDR as that would be the least expensive solution and is known to have stable AGP and PCI-E support.
 
You can't geek up on AGP architecture all you like but working cards in slots can't be argued with.

My 6600GT works in it, my mates 7900GTO worked in the PCI-E slot too.

Heres my setup.

E6400
6600 GT
1.5gig DDR
80gig IDE Maxtor
300gig SATA Maxtor

No problems at all with AGP.
No problems at all with SATA.

The bios myth...Yes you need the new bios, thats because this board existed before core2duo, but all the boards from scan are v1.60 at least, i say this because mine was v1.60, thus its fair to say that their current stock will be at least that.


EDIT: you may well be right on the older versions of the board. The current versions however....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom