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My computer is a couple of years old and has an AGP 4x slot, I need a new card to be able to play EQ2 but I want to be sure that I'm getting the right one. Of the 256 MB AGP cards I'm looking at they are all 8x, will an 8x card work in a 4x slot?

I think I found what I'm looking for on the ATi site:

http://www.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html

I'm looking at a Radeon 9600 which should be OK with AGP 4x according to the above link..

An AGP x8 card should work in a x4 port. It will just run at slower speeds, because of the port.

Most cards don't need AGP 8x. The mid-range cards up to the 5700Ultra/9600XT aren't much faster than the Ti4600, and that was originally for AGP 4x.

And a related question which I didn't want to make a thread for: do AGP 8x cards work on AGP 1x/2x mobos?

I don't see why they wouldn't; in theory hardware is supposed to be backwards compatible with older hardware, although you might find that your 1x/2x AGP board won't support one of the newer video cards.

The price on motherboards is really dropping, so you may be able to find a newer board (which almost all support the AGP 8x bus) in the $40-100 range.

[QUOTE=Rookierookie]And a related question which I didn't want to make a thread for: do AGP 8x cards work on AGP 1x/2x mobos?[/QUOTE]

No. AGP 2x cards use a different voltage for the interface, and to prevent damaging either the card or the motherboard, the AGP slot is slightly different.

The answer is yes.

Yes, an AGP 8X card will work in a 4X slot and I did not really notice much difference when I changed slots and from what I can gather most cards are backwards compatible.

Man, you guys pick up your hardware for a pretty reasonable price in the US. The cheapest motherboard I can get is R471.96 which is roughly $79. That is one of the cheapest motherboards that I can get, but then again you guys are not in the rear end of the world.

Antharias