You ask several questions.
0. AGP 4x has been around for some time. AGP Pro is a new slot for AGP cards to sit in. It is backward compatible with older (i.e. today's) video cards like the GeForce 2 and Radeon. AGP Pro will support the 4x standard. AGP 4x does not show much increase in performace (yet) over AGP 2x. AGP 8x is on the drawing board. It should be out in a couple of years.
1. The NV20 will be announced at the end of February. Expect availability in late March, early April. The initial cost will be about $500. I expect that to hit $400 by May. The good thing is that this will drive the Geforce 2 prices down even further making a GeForce 2 Ultra within the reach of more people.
2. The Radeon will not be able to compete with the NV20. It already cannot compete with the Ultra. It can compete with the GeForce 2 GTS right now, and wins in price/performance along with visual quality. Perhaps ATI will come out with a Radeon Ultra or some such beast. I simply do not know.
3. Rambus (the memory) is not bad. Rambus (the lawfirm, I mean company) is bad. Next generation supercomputers use Rambus memory. The P4 is awesome with Rambus memory and the bandwidth it provides. The P3 was harrible with Rambus. That was due to (1) the P3's limited 133 MHz interface and (2) the latency of Rambus memory. With the bottleneck removed in the P4, issue #1 is gone. Issue #2 is still there, but it is no longer as big a problem.
A single channel DDR platform cannot compete with a dual channel Rambus. If that sounds like I am comparing apples (single channel) to oranges (dual channel), then consider that it is easier to make a dual channel Rambus platform than a dual channel DDR platform since there are fewer traces with Rambus than with DDR.
Personally I would love for Rambus the company to lose the lawsuits. But my dislike for the company does not blind me to the potential of Rambus the memory.
4. All that said about the P4 and Rambus the memory being great together, remember that this current version of the P4 (the Willamette core) is due to die out at the end of 2001. My father-in-law has a 5V P60 (o/c to 66). I would love to upgrade it to a P200, but the P200 uses 3.3V. The same thing will happen with this version of the P4. Quoting from an Anandtech article:
"...around Q3-2001 the Pentium 4 will be available in two flavors, a Socket-423 version (the initial Pentium 4 socket) and Socket-478 (mPGA478) version"
On the other hand, the Socket-423 version of the P4 is expected to scale to 2 Ghz. That still is not shabby.
5. If you are looking to put together a system in 5 months (April 2001), then I would suggest an AMD CPU with a DDR motherboard and the NV20. While Intel is beating AMD in the performance race right now, they lose in the price/performace race. The money saved going with AMD should give you enough money to get an NV20. For example, using prices right now:
AMD 1.2 Ghz: $300
AMD DDR MB : $200
256 MB DDR : $400
Total: $900
Intel P4 1.5 Ghz : $850
P4 Motherboard : $300
256 MB PC800 Rambus : $300
Total: $1450
The difference is enough, right now, to buy a GeForce 2 Ultra, or what the NV20 is likely to cost in April. Of course, things change. Right now there is an oversupply of SDRAM, and a shortage of DDR. Who knows what memory prices will be next week, much less 5 months from now.
Personally, I do not buy on the cutting edge. I have enough of that at my work. I buy on the trailing curve where prices are cheap, and performance is still better than what I need (not want). Right now I have a 300A o/c to 450 that does me fine. (If the Duron had been available, I probably would have gone that route.) As the P3/C2 dies off, and prices drop, I will upgrade.
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