Arney wrote:
> I'm trying to squeeze some more lift out of this system. I'm considering
> buying a 20"+ LCD and I know for best picture quality I'll need a video card
> with DVI connector. Does anyone know of an AGP video card with DVI
> connectors that the Abit BH6 will support? Thanks!
>
If buying a monitor, it should have a VGA connector for sure. That
is so you can use it in more situations. Someone here did mention
purchasing a monitor that had only a DVI connector, and that is
limiting. If you want to try DVI, get a monitor with both a
DVI and an AGP connector.
Same goes for video cards. The video card DVI connector, is generally
DVI-I (meaning it contains a DVI-D digital part, and also has
the VGA signals on the same connector). If a card happened to have
two DVI-I connectors, you'd want the video card package to contain
at least one DVI-I to VGA conversion dongle. Again, the purpose of
that, is so your video card has a VGA alternative output, for
situations where the regular monitor is not present. Buying the
necessary adapter for the DVI-I later, will cost a lot more than
it should.
There are probably a ton of video cards that have both kinds of
output (DVI and VGA) on them.
According to this, the BH6 is a 440BX board. The BH6 can run at
133MHz for the processor. If your processor is one that runs at
133MHz, it means your AGP card slot runs at 89MHz. Such a speed
rules out some of the more modern cards. I think the ATI 9800Pro
was one of the first modern cards, where it could not function
properly above 75MHz. Older cards have been run at up to 100MHz
on the AGP slot clock, which means there will be some cards that
could function with FSB133 and AGP89.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=205
If your processor runs at 100MHz, then the AGP slot runs at
2/3rd of that or 66MHz. That is the correct frequency.
If you wanted to avoid all mention of AGP and AGP issues,
you could buy a FX5200 PCI card. Then, you'd be limited
by the PCI bus. An AGP card is a little bit less restrictive.
I have tried an FX5200 AGP card in my 440BX computer (sitting
next to me). That computer has had two different brands of
5200 AGP in it, it currently is running with a Geforce3 TI200,
and it failed to run an ATI 9800Pro (even though my computer
is 100MHz for the processor and 66Mhz for the AGP slot). So
I could not recommend the ATI 9800Pro in this case, for whatever
reason prevented it from working. But there is a good chance
that an FX5200 AGP would work. And since it has the same
GPU, likely a FX5500 AGP might work as well. But note, that
this alternative is most viable if the FSB is 100MHz. If
the FSB is 133Mhz, that still means there is some risk involved
in the (AGP) video card choice.
In terms of more modern cards, there are some AGP cards that
are bridged (using Rialto or HSI chip, for ATI and Nvidia cards
respectively). But I'm not sure such cards will even fit
in the video card slot - they might well be keyed for 1.5V
only. A 440BX motherboard should be keyed for 3.3V video
cards, which means a 3.3V video card, or a "universal" video
card (with two slots cut) would fit. While my 9800Pro has
two slots cut, something prevents it from otherwise working.
And, yes, the Aux power cable was connected.
For more info, see this page. This doesn't contain all the
latest AGP cards, but because many of the latest ones are
bridged, I wouldn't want to try them, unless I could return
the card immediately to the store.
http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html
You can always google on "BH6 AGP problem" and see what
other cards are known not to work.
HTH,
Paul
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