2 Notches Good 3 Notches Bad??

why hello my cheery friends me again with a similar line of enquiry but not quite! Sorry i didnt quite know whether to start a new thread or not so i thought wat the hell mite aswell! :rolleyes:

My old graphics card has 3 notches........and works perfectly well.......by notches i mean the bit that slips into the AGP slot, however the Radeon 9600XT has 2 notches.........does this have any bearing on whether the card will work with my motherboard.......and does anyone know anything about voltages for teh graphics card and what the 9600XT needs?

My system is
AMD Athalon 1.2Ghz
512Mb SDRAM
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2LS
U.S. Robotics Network card and
HiperPower 420W PSU

This relates to the core supplied voltage to the card. 2 notches in one position means 3.3v, in the oposite poisition means 1.5v (AGP 1x and 2x used 3.3v, 2x->8x use 1.5v).

Having more notches on the card means it works with either, otherwise it will only work with the correctly keyed AGP connector (for a 9600 this would be a newer 1.5V slot)

notice that a lot of mobos have a sticker on the agp slot when new saying "warning, do not attempt to use 3.3v cards in here"

similarly some mobos (nf7-s for example) have that part of the agp socket missing, so only 1.5v cards can be used - meaning when i got my mobo i had to use a 3dfx banshee (pci) for a whlie instead of the voodoo 5500 which i intened to use

indeed. the voodoo5 is keyed to work at 3.3v only, so any slot which is keyed for 1.5 simply won't take it - not without excessive force, at least.