Having become accustomed to PCI Express, we'd almost forgotten about the good ol' Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP).
We're certain most of our readers have moved on (and if you haven't, shame on you), but Sapphire tells us that AGP graphics cards continue to sell well throughout Europe. That sounds like an opportunity, and it's hoping to take full advantage with this:
That's AMD's Radeon HD 4650 GPU armed with an AGP interface supporting both 8x and 4x speeds. Great news for those with ageing systems in need of an upgrade, but there are a few provisos to be aware of. The Radeon HD 4650 AGP card features dual-link DVI and a single HDMI dongle is bundled in - users should note, however, that audio over HDMI isn't possible due to the limitations of the AGP bus.
Still, it isn't everyday an AGP user can tout 320 stream processors, 1GB of memory interfacing via a 128-bit bus, support for DirectX 10.1 and hardware-acceleration for high-def media. We've yet to hear a mention of pricing, but the card's complete specification is detailed by Sapphire as follows:
| ASIC | Radeon HD 4650 |
|---|---|
| Bus Interface | AGP 8X/4X |
| Memory | DDR2 1024MB / 128bit |
| Clock Speed | 600 Eclk /400MHz Mclk |
| Cooling System | Single slot active cooler |
| Bracket | Full Height |
| Display Support | 2x DL-DVI-I/HDTV-out |
| VGA (via adapter) | |
| HDMI (DVI-to-HDMI adapter), video signal only | |
| HDCP | Yes |
| External Power | 1 x 6 pin power connector |
| Standard Accessories | HDTV out cable adapter x1 |
| S-Video to Composite adapter x 1 | |
| 6 pin to 4 pin power adapter x 1 | |
| DVI to HDMI Adapter x 1 | |
| DVI to VGA Adapter x 1 |
