is AGP 8x reaching its limit anytime soon?

[SonicIce]

PCIe is a scam to make more money. we don't need the extra headroom. the end.

 

[Budarow]

If your system has a CPU slower than ~3.2 GHz for a Intel P4 or 2.3 GHz for an AMD XP I'd guess that an X800XT or a 6800 GT would be the fastest video card your system could "feed". I hope I get the 2 X800XT PE's I ordered from ATI which will effectively "top out" my current 2 PCs for gaming performance.

I will never upgrade the video cards if I end up getting the X800XT PE's because I don't think I'd get more than 1 or 2 FPS increase in performance for a newer high end graphics game.

My $0.02 worth.

Regards,

Bud

 

[flawlssdistortn]

So does anyone know what current game saturates the bus the most? I imagine the amount of memory on the graphics card affects the bus saturation, depending if RAM is used to store textures. BTW, is there a PCI-express aperture option as well as for AGP?

 

[kmmatney]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: Genx87
PCIE also have more upload bandwidth and provides more power.

Which only benefits SLI. If you don't use SLI then PCI-E offers nothing. Even the fact that it provides 'more power' means nothing as high end PCI-E video cards STILL need an additional power line, same as AGP.

Originally posted by: Genx87
AGP is a deadhorse. I dont want to see it being beat like ISA was.

PCI offered a performance increase over ISA. PCI-E doesn't.

I think that is only partially true. For Turbocache and Hypermemory card PCI-E does offer better performance (and makes these cards possible).

Most likely any new high end AGP cards will have a price premium. This is not true now, but probebly will be in the future, especially if NVidia drops AGP support on high end.

 

[PhlashFoto]

Originally posted by: sodcha0s

It will, in the future, but right now there are none. It's only been within the past couple of years that AGP performance has been stretched past what PCI could provide. AGP has been out for what, 8-10 years?

IIRC, AGP might have been on a board or two around back in 1996. But I am sure Intel's first chipset to support AGP was the Pentium II slot 1 based 440LX, released in Aug. 1997. I was never much interested in 3rd party chipsets.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: cubby1223
No. But what is true, is AGP 8x has reached its limit in terms of high end card support. I'd be very surprised if we see any GeForce 7800 series in AGP, or the new upcoming Radeons in AGP.

*sigh* Here it is again...

ATI 2005 Desktop Roadmap shows R520, RV530 and RV515 to be available in both AGP and PCI-E.

Poor management decision. PCIE boards have been out in full force for over a year.
Most high end enthusiasts who would purchase a high end video card will be building a new machine and I can gurantee you it wont be cenetered around an AGP MB.

Since when has the high end enthusiast market been where the money is for ATI/Nvidia?

NForce 3 Socket 939 offers almost identical performance to NForce 4 socket 939. Major different being AGP vs. PCI-E. How many people really would want to move from an NForce 3 to an NForce 4 just for PCI-E? How many people, including gamers are happy with the cpu power offered by their socket A systems?

I believe its silly to kill off AGP so quickly with how the sockets panned out on the AMD side at least. Although after this 7800/r520 phase, I think AGP solutions should be restricted to the low-end.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: Genx87
PCIE also have more upload bandwidth and provides more power.

Which only benefits SLI. If you don't use SLI then PCI-E offers nothing. Even the fact that it provides 'more power' means nothing as high end PCI-E video cards STILL need an additional power line, same as AGP.

Originally posted by: Genx87
AGP is a deadhorse. I dont want to see it being beat like ISA was.

PCI offered a performance increase over ISA. PCI-E doesn't.

The upload bandwidth also helps professional rendering apps in the quadro series. (and probably geforce, but ive never tried professional apps on a PCI-E Geforce 6000 series).

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
The upload bandwidth also helps professional rendering apps in the quadro series. (and probably geforce, but ive never tried professional apps on a PCI-E Geforce 6000 series).

True, PCI-E does also help in that area. I'm not saying PCI-E is junk or that we shouldn't switch over to it. It's an upgrade to AGP which was an upgrade to PCI which was an upgrade...

I'm simply saying that there's no reason to try and push AGP out the door so quickly. The number of AGP systems in use will slowly decline while the number of PCI-E systems will increase. Just let normal upgrading and attrition replace the AGP slot. It's not hurting video performance for the vast majority of people (professional rendering systems or SLI notwithstanding).

A lot of people would simply like one more round of AGP video cards to tide them over until they feel the need to upgrade to a new processor which will also most likely necessitate a motherboard change.

 

[Nickrand]

I think another year or two of mid to high end graphics cards in AGP would be smart a management decision. Alot of folks like myself don't like to turn over their entire computer every year (or two). I try to upgrade a part or two per year which leaves some of my components 5 years old at times (right now monitor and hard drive are pretty darn old). I'd like to get 2-3 more years out of my A64 3000+ (754) rig. Its possible I'd buy 2 more AGP cards for this system before I pull another cpu/mobo/memory upgrade.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: Acanthus
The upload bandwidth also helps professional rendering apps in the quadro series. (and probably geforce, but ive never tried professional apps on a PCI-E Geforce 6000 series).

True, PCI-E does also help in that area. I'm not saying PCI-E is junk or that we shouldn't switch over to it. It's an upgrade to AGP which was an upgrade to PCI which was an upgrade...

I'm simply saying that there's no reason to try and push AGP out the door so quickly. The number of AGP systems in use will slowly decline while the number of PCI-E systems will increase. Just let normal upgrading and attrition replace the AGP slot. It's not hurting video performance for the vast majority of people (professional rendering systems or SLI notwithstanding).

A lot of people would simply like one more round of AGP video cards to tide them over until they feel the need to upgrade to a new processor which will also most likely necessitate a motherboard change.

I completely agree that it should be phased out more slowly. But theres a lot of obvious reasons why they are rushing the shift.

1. Chipset sales
2. They dont want to pay for AGP bridge chips
3. Power constraints
4. Hype
5. Performance (professional, and possibly future gaming)

 

[Deinonych]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
PCIe is a scam to make more money. we don't need the extra headroom. the end.

LOL

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: Acanthus
The upload bandwidth also helps professional rendering apps in the quadro series. (and probably geforce, but ive never tried professional apps on a PCI-E Geforce 6000 series).

True, PCI-E does also help in that area. I'm not saying PCI-E is junk or that we shouldn't switch over to it. It's an upgrade to AGP which was an upgrade to PCI which was an upgrade...

I'm simply saying that there's no reason to try and push AGP out the door so quickly. The number of AGP systems in use will slowly decline while the number of PCI-E systems will increase. Just let normal upgrading and attrition replace the AGP slot. It's not hurting video performance for the vast majority of people (professional rendering systems or SLI notwithstanding).

A lot of people would simply like one more round of AGP video cards to tide them over until they feel the need to upgrade to a new processor which will also most likely necessitate a motherboard change.

I completely agree that it should be phased out more slowly. But theres a lot of obvious reasons why they are rushing the shift.

1. Chipset sales
2. They dont want to pay for AGP bridge chips
3. Power constraints
4. Hype
5. Performance (professional, and possibly future gaming)

Yes, those are all understandable drives for the manufactorers. But those are all things that don't benefit us...the consumers. (with the exception of professional workstation users, which I don't know many of) There's the product, the horsesh|t that surrounds the product, and us. If you're a smart consumer you've got to dig to through the horsesh|t and get to what you really want. Of course, there's plenty of consumers that are well fed on horsesh|t that you have to get around too.

The fact is, products that fully saturate the AGP bus won't be in existence until AGP has faded away naturally through the user base buying new motherboards. This will be particularly true for the majority of the mid range users.

I for one am happy to see some cross-over products on the market. I also like to buy my stuff a chunk at a time...and I'm sort of stuck since the next thing on the list is a new video card, but if I buy a AGP one it'll be useless come time to upgrade the motherboard/cpu.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
I'm sort of stuck since the next thing on the list is a new video card, but if I buy a AGP one it'll be useless come time to upgrade the motherboard/cpu.

Not necessarily...


FIRST LOOK: ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP Socket 939 for Athlon 64

ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP for Athlon 64 ? Part 2 with SLI

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: PingSpike
I'm sort of stuck since the next thing on the list is a new video card, but if I buy a AGP one it'll be useless come time to upgrade the motherboard/cpu.

Not necessarily...


FIRST LOOK: ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP Socket 939 for Athlon 64

ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP for Athlon 64 ? Part 2 with SLI

Yeah, those are a option that I might look into.