[cerebralcow]

I need to buy a motherboard with a 775 socket, a 16x AGP slot, and 2 DDR2 533 slots. I searched newegg and tiger direct, neither of them had a 775 board with AGP. My graphics card is a Geforce 7800.

Also is it possible to have support for AGP and PCI-E on the same motherboard? Im sure its impossible to use both slots at the same time but just to have them for upgradability maybe.

[Wadd]

Hello Cerebralcow,

You would be incredibly lucky just to find any motherboard with DDR2 AND an AGP slot. Let alone with a certain CPU socket. AGP is pretty much a phased out technology. They still sell AGP video cards for people with older motherboards. But you will have quite a hard time finding new motherboards with an AGP slot. I checked Newegg for any DDR2 533 boards with an AGP slot and I came up with your same conclusion....nothing. I didn't even look for a specific socket type.

However, I notice you call it a 16x AGP slot. AGP comes in 2x, 4x, and 8x varieties. 16x typically would refer to PCI-Express X16. So I checked Newegg for the 7800 video card and couldn't find a model that came in an AGP version.

Are you sure your card is AGP? If it is an AGP card, my advice would be to replace your video card. Well regardless of my advice, I doubt you have any choice either way.

Hope that helps

[cerebralcow]

aw, I didn't think AGP would be phased out this quickly :/ I guess its happening more quickly than most other things because the only people it really affects is the (at least slightly) tech savvy people who upgrade/build their PCs. and yes I'm sure its an AGP.
I havn't been keeping up with video cards lately, does anyone know of any good deals right now for a PCI-E around $100-$200?

[zinglebarb]

16x AGP slots never existed anyway

this is a UK site but if you do a search you may find one stateside Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Socket 775 Motherboard - Aria Technology


PartsPC.com-ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Core 2 Quad Socket 775 VIA PT880 Pro Chipset 1066FSB DDR-400/DDR2-667 AGP8X/PCI.e Motherboard:Socket 775 DDR2 PCI Express here ys go matey .

The 7800 GS is available as an AGP card

[Wadd]

Good find Zingle

I checked Pricewatch.com for that board....the search came up with two vendors. Here is the search - Pricewatch ® - Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Socket 775

If you were still going to consider upgrading to a PCI-Express video card, here is a great deal. Newegg.com - XFX PVT88PYDF4 GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards It is a great price in your price range. It has tons of reviews with a 5 star rating and very few ratings below 5 star. XFX is a great brand with a lifetime warranty.

If you wanted to go a bit cheaper, you could get a 256 megabyte version. You won't be able to play games at really high resolutions, but it will still give you great performance at regular resolutions. More video memory only really affects how high of a resolution you can play on.

The 8800 GT is going to be the best bang per buck you can find right now.

Hope that helps!

[cerebralcow]

so what is the difference between a PCI-E slot and a 16x PCI-E slot I noticed this board doesnt have a 16x slot

[Wadd]

PCI-Express has 2 current standards. PCI-E 1.1 and PCI-E 2.0. PCI-E 1.1 is commonly reffered to as X16. PCI-E 2.0 is a faster port than PCI-E 1.1.

If it just says PCI-E and doesn't define what version, most of the time it is just referring to PCI-E 1.1 X16.

At this point, there is nothing to worry about cause there really isn't a card that can push enough data to even utilize all the bandwitch of a PCI-E 1.1 X16 port. Let alone a PCI-2.0 port. Down the road when you see SLI configurations using super high end video cards like the 9800 GX2, then you will most likely see a performance difference by moving to a motherboard with the faster PCI-E 2.0 card. This is all just my amateur speculation though...I can't say I have any real numbers to support that info, but you get the idea

Here is a good article - PCI Express - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia