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How feasible is an Accelerated Graphics Bus?

4

454Casull

Banned
I want to know your opinions on this. Why should we have to go back to PCI if we want 2+ displays without buying a card that support multi-display?
 
Unfortunately the only other option is to have 2 AGP slots on the motherboard. Now that gives the problem that 95% of people probably just want one graphics card and one monitor, but the size of an AGP slot would at least remove 1 PCI slot from the motherboard, and also chipset support would be needed, which would cost more.

Then the real problem: what use would it be?!? You'll only play games on one monitor, and therefore the second display adaptor only needs to be able to handle 2D adequately. There are plenty of cheap PCI graphics cards which fit the bill, including the Voodoo3 which also would give you Glide support for old games (and these games are old enough that the V3 is powerful enough to play them perfectly well), and has very nice 2D quality. Matrox cards are best for 2D and are available in PCI versions, so there's no reason for a second AGP slot.
 


<< You'll only play games on one monitor, and therefore the second display adaptor only needs to be able to handle 2D adequately. >>


If I can have two fast cards, I'll play on both monitors, if there is software support.
 
There are also a lot of first generation Radeons for the PCI slot. In principle, you could even put the 2nd card to use if a game allows you to set which accelerator to use. Most games do.
Never tried that. Better have a lot of CPU power onboard...
 
For a second I though, thats rediculous! Why the hell would you play a game on 2 monitors? But then, I realized, its not a bad idea- what if in counterstrike, you could use the second monitor as a rear-view camera? Or maybe show all the player stats, and your radar (enlarged) on the 2nd one? I'm sure there would be many great uses for games to support a second monitor, although most of them would probably be more 2D than 3D.... my 2 cents
 
AGP 3.0 will allow for more than one card. Until then, AGP doesn't allow for multiple device, neither electrically nor from the programming side of things.

Watch for AMD's Hammer 8000 series chipsets ... by the end of the year if all goes well.

regards, Peter
 
then again, why bother with AGP at all...

64bit 66mhz PCI bus equates to virtually the same thing and better.

With the advent of the new PCI-x, You might as well just get a 64bit PCI slot Oxygen. 😀
 
But with PCI-X, don't you share the bandwidth with other devices on the bus?

EDIT: Although you do have a point - AGP is needless now. 128MB will prevent virtually all system memory accesses.
 


<< But with PCI-X, don't you share the bandwidth with other devices on the bus?

EDIT: Although you do have a point - AGP is needless now. 128MB will prevent virtually all system memory accesses. >>



For the next 3 years or so. By then, I'm sure nvidia, ati, and the video game industry in general will find a reason to make 128mb onboard part of their minimum specs.
 
A Port has a fundamentally different architecture to a slot. With PCI, you could potentially put 100 PCI slots connected to a single controller, with AGP, you need 1 controller per port.
 


<< A Port has a fundamentally different architecture to a slot. With PCI, you could potentially put 100 PCI slots connected to a single controller, with AGP, you need 1 controller per port. >>


Stumbled onto the wrong thread? Anyway, I believe the maximum number of slots allowable per controller is 6, defined by PCI 2.0.
 
wrong thread? no.😕

AGP stands for Accelerated Graphics port. What I am saying is that the architecture of PCI is different from AGP. In theory it would be very easy to put 100 PCI slots onto a single controller but you would be faced with unacceptable latency and bandwidth issues. AGp though requires a dedicated access. The whole point of developing AGP would be that there would be 1 port per controller so you have guarenteed bandwidth.
 
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