macten

I built this pc about 7 years ago. I'm not having any problems but am wondering if I can increase it's performance.

I never installed the chipset drivers but have the latest video driver installed. Everest indicates my AGP speed is 1x and that 2x is supported. By installing the latest chipset drivers will that bring the AGP speed up to 2x?

AMD Athlon Thunderbird 850
chipset AMD-751
W2000 Pro
Nvidia GeForce2 MX 100/200

MaverickUK

Hey,

I think the card you bought only supports AGP 1x and the motherboard is capable of supporting graphics cards that use AGP 2x. You should find out if your card is actually AGP 1x or 2x.

macten

Thanks for the reply. According to this link, it supports 4X:

http://www.technoyard.com/hardware/v...MX/page_2.html

macten

I'm goint to try and attach a screen shot:

Does this screen shot mean that my card is 4X?

Attached Files

AGP 2 Shot.doc (86.5 KB, 4 views)

MaverickUK

Yes that does mean your graphics card runs at 4x. Though you now need to know what the mtoherboard supports in terms of speed - do you have a link or name and manufacturer of your motherboard?

UncleMacro

AMD 751 motherboards support up to AGP 2X and GeForce 2 MXs support up to AGP 4X so you can run at a max of AGP 2X. If you don't have motherboard chipset drivers installed then you're probably running at AGP 1X.

This page explains in detail how to install chipset drivers. Some motherboards with your AMD chipset use an AMD northbridge and a VIA southbridge (the page listed above explains what that means). If that's the case then just install the AGP driver rather than the AMD driver pack.

macten

Thanks for all the help. My southbridge is AMD so I'll download the chipset driver package. Hopefully everything goes smoothly...

dai

the original chipset drivers must have been loaded ,without them it would not have run

UncleMacro

That's not actually how things work. They always tell you to install your chipset drivers first but Windows has to be able to boot and function before you install chipset drivers. Windows can provide basic functionalilty for any motherboard with none installed. Obviously you lose quite a bit without having them installed. If you're running an AGP video card with no chipset drivers (the GART driver is included with them) then the AGP slot just reverts to being essentially a 66 MHz PCI slot (twice as fast as a usual PCI slot). It works fine but only as a fast PCI slot. Once you install the GART driver then the added AGP functionality appears.

I've tried installing Windows and leaving out the GART driver just to see the symptoms of not having them and never had a problem installing them later. They tell you to install the AGP drivers before the display driver but I've never seen a problem doing it in the other order.