First post, by Great Hierophant
- Rank
- l33t
I have a rare opportunity to purchase a Voodoo 5 5500 in either its PC AGP or MAC PCI iterations. I would like some advice on which to buy. Here is where I see the advantages of each:
PC/AGP
Half the price
Greater AGP thoughtput
MAC/PCI
No problem with overclocked AGP slots on BX boards
DVI connector
In my opinion, the clear winner is the PCI version, especially if you are using a BX board above 100MHz. This old Anandtech article shows that it is only a fraction slower than the AGP version:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1292&p=1
The AGP bus gives the graphics card exclusive bandwidth, the PCI bus requires the graphics card to share bandwidth with a whole host of peripherals, including the hard disk drive controller, PCI sound cards and Ethernet adapters to name a few.
For a couple of years, I used a Geforce 256 with a BX motherboard running at 133FSB without apparent problem. One day, however, I got white streaks in my video and had to replace the card. I do not know whether overclocking had anything to do with it. The Geforce 4 also worked OK. But for such magnificent vintage hardware, why risk shortening its lifespan? This assumes that it will work at all at the higher bus speed. If you will not encounter this problem, then the AGP card becomes a much better option.
DVI gives crystal clear digital images, VGA does not. VGA offers an easy connection to multiple resolutions without ugly interpolation. But if you have both, so much the better.
