Actually it is a case of it is a bad idea to use it on ATI AGP cards until December.  Nvidia AGP systems should work ok, though the cpu may be a little higher than a PCIE system (PCIE is simply a better bus design than AGP)

Once the new ATI drivers are released, AGP 8x machines should be ok with ATI cards.  Based on testing AGP 4x is simply not up to the job which I guess is why AGP 8x and PCIE x16 were invented.

There may be a few PCIE systems from ATI which experience unusually high cpu usage but again the December drivers should resolve this as well.  This high cpu usage will show up in particular with ObjectDock running, though some tooltips may also cause slowness.

If you do experience high cpu usage before then with ATI systems then ensure you have not forced antialiasing in the driver settings.  Once the December drivers are out all should be fine with this as well.

the fact that deskscapes wont work on AGP yet doesn't bother me as i don't intend on using it anyway, and i know that dreams were originally only for vista, but it producing an XP version it is always worthwhile to consider what hardware those XP users are most likely to be using and work accordingly. It's nice that eventually they will work on AGP 8x but this should have been detailed right from the start. How many people have gone and downloaded/installed the program on XP only to find that it wont run or is making their computers unusable. I am just saying that clearer information right from the beginning would have been nice so people wouldn't get their hopes up and make rash desicions that they may regret

What annoys me is that at no time before today have I seen SD announce that deskcapes 2.5 would probably not work on its release date for 70% of its subscribers, especially when the forums have been full of people with their tongues hanging out waiting for the release. I must admit that I feel misled.

Maybe in december if and when the drivers are released it may run fine on 8x AGP, but I fear that that the demands on the cpu/graphics card probably wont make running deskcapes full time a viable option. (or perhaps I am being over sceptical (don't know why that should be)).

It stands to reason that most xp users will be using older machines which will likely have older type cards, although I admit I do not know the percentages any more than you do.

Whilst I take your point about holding the release up, my complaint is that SD did not inform in advance the people getting excited by the news of the release, creating disappointment to many.

Thank you for your reassurance that once the AGP drivers are available that it should run with low cpu usage.

Deskscapes 2.5 (with XP support published at 1pm)

• With a Dream file applied dragging and dropping icons from the desktop to a folder does not work at this time.
• Please visit this web site to review video card requirement details.  In short, AGP Video cards are not supported at this time.  Future driver updates from NVIDIA/ATI will add support later this year.  At that time only AGP 8x will be supported (4x/2x/1x bus speeds are not adequate to support dream functionality at low CPU).
• The Watercolor Dream may exhibit some distortion on Windows XP.

The above statement is from the official support thread. I read it before downloading.

Neil's responses specifically mentioned AGP ATI cards, so your GeForce 7600GS should work fine (it's a DX9 card, I think--I know I ran DX9 with the 7300GS in my old machine).

Any further feedback on the 'RunDLL as an app' crash when applying a dream in XPP (NVIDIA notebook)?  I probably won't use DeskScapes until the IP4 conflict gets resolved, but I'm curious.

It would be helpful if people stopped making up statistics.

A system with less than an 8X AGP slot is more than just a little old, it's downright ancient.  Even 8X AGP is very old.  

I would guess that fewer than a fifth of users aren't capable of 8X AGP or better.

Edit - error.

Actually yes.  I have a 9800SE with a P4 2.4Ghz which has an 845 chipset thats AGP 4x only.

The key thing to understand is AGP 8x and PCIE were invented for a reason and Deskscapes is showing why AGP 4x and lower were replaced.