AGP Cards with OpenGL 3 Support

Hello,

I almost hate to ask but does anyone know of any AGP cards that support OpenGL 3? Looks like the ATI Radeon 4650 supports DirectX 10.1, so if their OpenGL drivers are any good, I suppose the hardware is capable of supporting OpenGL 3. Although, I read that ATI doesn’t update drivers for AGP cards themselves???

I’d prefer NVIDIA, if possible, but the best AGP card I’ve found is the GeForce 7900, which I don’t believe will support OpenGL 3.

Thanks,
Patrick

AFAIK NVIDIA supports GL 3.2

And yest DX 10.1 compatible cards MUST be able to support GL 3.2, but it’s up to the IHV to make these drivers…

Well, not AGP, but I have one here that runs on PCI (no, not PCIe, PCI!).

GeForce 8400 GS, 512MB, PCI.

Yes I’m a glutten for punishment :D, but my home box is only AGP/PCI (prob like yours), and I’m trying to hold off upgrading my whole system until November or so. So few months back spotted this PCI GeForce 8 card, and just had to try it. Cost me like $30 after rebate or some such. Runs NVidia 3.x drivers on Linux – no problems.

It’s just fine for dev/testing/trying things for most uses (wouldn’t ever do perf benches with it though). The main deficiency is obvious: bus bandwidth:

  • PCIe v2 x16 = 8 GB/sec (theoretical)
  • AGP 8x = 2.1 GB/sec
  • PCI = 0.13 GB/sec

( :eek: hey, stop laughing! it works!), so you really take a hit pumping textures to the card. And just as obviously, it suffers tremendously trying to play videos for the same reason. Don’t use this for a MythTV client.

However, this card is a terrific for a temporary 3.x-capable stopgap (especially since I have a GTX285 on my desk at work) while I gather time, money, and specs for my new system. Highly recommended. Theoretically I could have popped my old GeForce 6800 AGP in with it at the same time and soft-switched between them using xorg.conf BusID magic when I wanted to play videos or needed better upload perf, but I haven’t yet.

It’s probably also good for many games that do the usual thing of uploading textures/shaders/VBOs/etc. on startup, and then just activating things at run-time. Though it performs very well with client arrays style drawing too.

Perhaps another option for you (which might, or might not be viable to you):

Buy a cheap motherboard with integrated video. Integrated video on AMD motherboards with an 780G chipset support OpenGL 3. Such a motherboard would only cost you about $50-$75. Of course whether this is viable depends on many things (perhaps your current processor doesn’t fit within such a motherboard, or you want to keep your current motherboard for a good reason).

Anyway… I think AMD doesn’t support AGP anymore. There are probably also not that many nVidia AGP graphics cards and I don’t know about the state of their AGP drivers. Basically I think buying AGP now is asking for problems with drivers. If there is another solution for you that does not involve buying an AGP card I would choose that road.

nVidia’s 7900 does NOT support OpenGL 3 by the way. You need an 8xxx series or higher card for that. For AMD you would be looking for an HD2xxx series or higher graphics card. Or the integrated graphics card that comes with the 780G chipset (which is basically an HD2xxx series card I believe).

Thanks for the responses. Wow, I didn’t even think to look at PCI cards! This is a home machine used for experimentation so I’m not too concerned about performance, I just want to be able to play with the latest OpenGL features. If upgrading the video card also involved upgrading my power supply, then I may be at the point to look at a new motherboard as suggested. Thanks for all the info!

Patrick

That’s another plus for the 8400 GS: a mere ~71 Watts (link). Versus 2.5X - 4X that for a top-of-the-line single-board GPU.

nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8X i don’t know if this is able to even support opengl… I am going to try to update the drivers from Nvidia now, but if that doesn’t work I have DX 9C should I update the DX to dx 10?
I am trying to play wolfenstein ET
This is what I get:

ET 2.55 win-x86 May 27 2003
----- FS_Startup -----
Current search path:
C:\PROGRA~1\WOLFEN~1\etmain\pak0.pk3 (3725 files)
C:\PROGRA~1\WOLFEN~1\etmain\mp_bin.pk3 (4 files)
C:\PROGRA~1\WOLFEN~1/etmain


3729 files in pk3 files
execing default.cfg
couldn’t exec language.cfg
couldn’t exec autoexec.cfg
Hunk_Clear: reset the hunk ok
…detecting CPU, found AMD w/ 3DNow!
Bypassing CD checks
----- Client Initialization -----
----- Initializing Renderer ----

----- Client Initialization Complete -----
----- R_Init -----
Initializing OpenGL subsystem
…initializing QGL
…calling LoadLibrary( ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\opengl32.dll’ ): succeeded
…setting mode 4: 800 600 FS
…using desktop display depth of 32
…calling CDS: ok
…registered window class
…created window@0,0 (800x600)
Initializing OpenGL driver
…getting DC: succeeded
…GLW_ChoosePFD( 32, 24, 0 )
…35 PFDs found
…GLW_ChoosePFD failed
…GLW_ChoosePFD( 32, 24, 0 )
…35 PFDs found
…GLW_ChoosePFD failed
…failed to find an appropriate PIXELFORMAT
…restoring display settings
…WARNING: could not set the given mode (4)
…setting mode 4: 800 600 FS
…using colorsbits of 16
…calling CDS: ok
…created window@0,0 (800x600)
Initializing OpenGL driver
…getting DC: succeeded
…GLW_ChoosePFD( 16, 16, 0 )
…35 PFDs found
…GLW_ChoosePFD failed
…GLW_ChoosePFD( 16, 16, 0 )
…35 PFDs found
…GLW_ChoosePFD failed
…failed to find an appropriate PIXELFORMAT
…restoring display settings
…WARNING: could not set the given mode (3)
…shutting down QGL
…unloading OpenGL DLL
…assuming ‘3dfxvgl’ is a standalone driver
…initializing QGL
…WARNING: missing Glide installation, assuming no 3Dfx available
…shutting down QGL
----- CL_Shutdown -----
RE_Shutdown( 1 )

GLW_StartOpenGL() - could not load OpenGL subsystem