vid card may be dead. AGP 8x vid card on 4x mobo?

[fanerman91]

I remember a year or so ago the difference wasn't a big deal, but is that still the case now? I have a 4x motherboard and I was running a 9600XT with an Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer Rev 3... but I encountered a problem other people had, involving what may be a short circuit or lack of contact or something. I haven't been able to fix it, so I may have to replace the it with a new one.

Anyway, if I need to get a new one, I'd rather not replace the mobo right away, so what kind of performance drop is there from and AGP 8x card an a 4x mobo?

If there's a big difference, I may just go PCIe with an Athlon 64 now instead of waiting til summer. If there isn't a big difference, what should I get? Right now the 2 things I've heard are "wait for the 6600GT to come out on AGP" and "get the 6800NU whenever and unlock some pipes." I plan on getting a 3rd party heatsink despite the problems I've had with this one (hopefully Arctic Cooling fixes whatever problems it has with clicking and what not)

I do a bit of gaming, ie, I'm itching to play HL2, so I try to keep a fairly mid-level system (as close to silent as possible of course). I only have an Athlon XP1800 (3 years old), so I'll consider upgrading that now... but I wasn't planning on it til summer. Thanks

[cansan]

I have an old Tbird 1.3 on an ASUS A7V-E. I originally had a crappy GF2MX-200 which I swapped for a Sapphire 9600XT this summer. I had no problems with my mobo being 4x and the card 8x. I also researched a lot and most results were that 8x doesn't matter that much, especially if your vidcard is not bleeding edge. For my 9600XT, I guess my old mobo/CPU is the limit, and not my AGP 4x. However, if you were to get something like say a 6800, then it might limit performance... Depends on Vidcard, CPU...