No further AGP cards from nVidia.

[Auric]

Originally posted by: Sphexi
I agree with higher-end GPUs it doesn't make sense, as AGP just can't handle the bandwidth. But does that mean if you have an older 478 mobo with a P4 and you want to make a decent-mid level rig, you are out of luck, and it's better to just go blow $500+ on a new one?

My wife has been using a P4 2.4/1.5GB DDR/X800XT for a while, I just upgraded her to a C2D system with a 7950GT in it. Decided to use her old parts for a HTPC, and I was happy that they still have newer GPUs on older cards, I got a HD2600 card from ATI, just so I'd have DX10 support, and hardware based HD decoding, as I put in a HD-DVD/Bluray LG drive in the box, and I know that the CPU won't be able to handle it on its own. It's a lower end card than the X800XT, but it's designed to do what I want it to, and it supports HDCP output to a HD LCD of some sort, which is all I care about.

Excellent point. Current designs with UVD being bridged to AGP is a boon for older systems. So, yeah, it's not just aboot high-performance 3D and the red herring of "bottle-necking the CPU". Even if the CPU is something less than an ideal match, higher quality options are available with current cards and they are more efficient all around. Indeed. an "old junker" sporting even a low-end AGP UVD card puts current systems lacking same to shame in both quality and power consumption (and therefore maybe even noise), and even multi-tasking ability.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Auric

Originally posted by: Sphexi
I agree with higher-end GPUs it doesn't make sense, as AGP just can't handle the bandwidth. But does that mean if you have an older 478 mobo with a P4 and you want to make a decent-mid level rig, you are out of luck, and it's better to just go blow $500+ on a new one?

My wife has been using a P4 2.4/1.5GB DDR/X800XT for a while, I just upgraded her to a C2D system with a 7950GT in it. Decided to use her old parts for a HTPC, and I was happy that they still have newer GPUs on older cards, I got a HD2600 card from ATI, just so I'd have DX10 support, and hardware based HD decoding, as I put in a HD-DVD/Bluray LG drive in the box, and I know that the CPU won't be able to handle it on its own. It's a lower end card than the X800XT, but it's designed to do what I want it to, and it supports HDCP output to a HD LCD of some sort, which is all I care about.

Excellent point. Current designs with UVD being bridged to AGP is a boon for older systems. So, yeah, it's not just aboot high-performance 3D and the red herring of "bottle-necking the CPU". Even if the CPU is something less than an ideal match, higher quality options are available with current cards and they are more efficient all around. Indeed. an "old junker" sporting even a low-end AGP UVD card puts current systems lacking same to shame in both quality and power consumption (and therefore maybe even noise), and even multi-tasking ability.

Evidently NVIDIA doesn't *care"* about that market .. where still 1/4 of PCs are AGP

they must have too much cash - i didn't think it was possible


and at the very least, i'd expect them to want to choke off a source of AMD's 'profit line' .. and the margin looks to be "fat" by the amount they charge for the privilege of offering it in AGP considering it costs them about $10 for the Rialto bridge .. research is done
... but what do i really know? NVIDIA's decisions are becoming incomprehensible to me.

 

[Margalus]

nvidia dropping agp makes sense to me. AGP is a good format, and still had room. But the fact is that there are already plenty of agp cards out now that are cpu bound in most agp systems. there are some early adopters of a64 and highly overclocked p4's that might have a little room. But that market is fairly small.

Why make more high powered cards that people would just complain about when they buy them? Somebody might buy a new card and expect a big performance jump just to find out that they get the exact same performace as the old card and not realize it's because of their slow cpu.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Sphexi
I agree with higher-end GPUs it doesn't make sense, as AGP just can't handle the bandwidth. But does that mean if you have an older 478 mobo with a P4 and you want to make a decent-mid level rig, you are out of luck, and it's better to just go blow $500+ on a new one?

My wife has been using a P4 2.4/1.5GB DDR/X800XT for a while, I just upgraded her to a C2D system with a 7950GT in it. Decided to use her old parts for a HTPC, and I was happy that they still have newer GPUs on older cards, I got a HD2600 card from ATI, just so I'd have DX10 support, and hardware based HD decoding, as I put in a HD-DVD/Bluray LG drive in the box, and I know that the CPU won't be able to handle it on its own. It's a lower end card than the X800XT, but it's designed to do what I want it to, and it supports HDCP output to a HD LCD of some sort, which is all I care about.

The AGP was far from being bandwidth limited. There's a benchmark around that was made handicapping the PCI-e @ 4x and the only card that showed a very sligh bottleneck was the 8800GTX, and considering that the AGP8x still having twice the downstream bandwidth than a PCI-E at 4x, because downstream is more important than upstream, and considering that most developers try to make sure to fit their data within the VRAM, because not even PCI-E is fast enough to use it to store textures without incurring in a huge performance drop (Video RAM is much much faster), otherwise the 8800GT 256MB wouldn't drop in performance severely like is doing now. . .

 

[ManWithNoName]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus

IMO, it's about hating AGP. People still have really bad memories of AGP.

Originally posted by: nullpointerus
evolucion8:

Believe what you will. The fact is that there were a lot of crappy AGP products on the market, and enough people got burned that there's a lingering hatred for AGP on this forum. There's your explanation. You can claim no understanding of this problems, and you can act like only the consumers were to blame for buying crappy products, but IMO that's just flamebait. I regret having responded to such tripe in the first place.

/discussion

Most of the AGP bashing I see is not due to any "lingering hatred" for the platform. True, there are probably some like yourself who have a bad taste in their mouth for the platform, but the majority of the people that I see who are trumpeting AGP is dead and trolling every AGP thread that comes up, do so because it's "fun". It's more or less the "gang mentality" where a group of kids, or even adults for that matter, target someone for being different and then hound them into submission or at least until they slink away.

Like Evolucion8, I really haven't had any of the problems that you've described or if I did, they were so minimal they're not even in my memory anymore. Below is part of my Graphics Card ladder, and it's not there for bragging, it's just to show you that I do have some experience with AGP. As you can see I enjoy swapping out video cards and trying out new hardware and before someone says it, no I don't enjoy wasting money on lateral upgrades. EBay usually treats me very well and don't lose that much money and often make a little if I time it right.

Now, am I denying that you had issues or that others have, no that would be crazy, but it would be just as crazy to attribute all the AGP hatred to just crappy AGP products. Personally, I just left the platform 7-8 months ago and it wasn't due to any bad experiences with AGP. The stars just happened to be alignment for once where I had some extra money at the same time I had some free time to build a new Rig.

AGP Graphics Card ladder since 1996

Matrox Mystique
STB Velocity 128
Diamond Viper II Savage 2000
Diamond Viper V550
Creative Labs TNT2
Hercules Stingray 128 3D / Vooodoo Rush
Creative Labs Geforce 256
Hercules 3D Prophet (Geforce 3)
Creative Annihilator Geforce 2 GTS
PNY Geforce 3
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB
EVGA FX 5900 Ultra 256MB
ATI Radeon X800 Pro 256MB
EVGA 6800GT 255MB
ATI Radeon X800XT-PE 256MB
ATI Radeon X850XT-PE 256MB
Visiontek X1950 Pro 256MB
Sapphire X1950 Pro 512MB
HIS X1950 Pro ICEQ3 Turbo 512MB
Gainward Bliss 7800GS+ Golden Sample GLH Edition
Gecube X1950XT 256MB
XFX 7950 GT 512MB

 

[evolucion8]

I didn't know that there was a X1950XT AGP card with 512MB??

 

[onlyCOpunk]

I think it's also due to the fact that AMD had such a good run with the XP+ and 64 CPU's and they realise that a lot of consumers are still using these platform which many come paired with AGP.

But I also think it's good that they are finally starting to phase it out. Because it gets to a point where a GPU can only do so much good for the older CPU's to where it doesn't even become worth it anymore.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

At this point its just cool to try and cook up archaic rigs based around an AGP platform and try and get it running well. Obviously the best candidate is going to be a s939 system with an X2 pushing 2.8GHz, but other rigs such as evolucion8's should still be chugging along in all but the most multithreaded CPU intensive games.

Of course we'd have to consider rules over what to do with newer AGP platforms...such as ASRock's 4CoreDual that supports 65nm Core 2s...(considering it has both a PCI-e and and AGP slot...) however its still available on the market and for relatively cheap, one could throw together such a rig for less money and hassle than it would take to try and hunt down truly archaic AGP platform parts (unless they already had them)

VIVA LA HOT-ROD AGP!

 

[ManWithNoName]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
I didn't know that there was a X1950XT AGP card with 512MB??

It was obviously typo because there is no such beast with 512MB of VRAM, but thanks for pointing it out. I'll fix my Graphics Ladder Doc file I keep handy for these conversations. So how's your second Gecube treating you? I know you had problems with the first one and had to RMA it. It still amazes me on welll the card can work without the use of ramsinks on the memory, guess those two wind-turbines on the TEC keep them cool enough.

Just noticed that you have 666 posts now. Must be a sign, you should get a HD 3850 AGP Card with the same number of transistors.

 

[Denithor]

GeCube x1950xt 256MB

Unfortunately for those AGP guys out there, deactivated product. Might be able to find a used one somewhere if you are really, really lucky. Otherwise just get the HD3850 AGP and be done with your rig until it's time for a full rebuild.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Denithor
GeCube x1950xt 256MB

Unfortunately for those AGP guys out there, deactivated product. Might be able to find a used one somewhere if you are really, really lucky. Otherwise just get the HD3850 AGP and be done with your rig until it's time for a full rebuild.

Why would anyone want one? .. the performance isn't much better than a much cheaper AGP x1950p/512M and there is also AGP 3850

 

[Margalus]

Originally posted by: ManWithNoName

Originally posted by: evolucion8
I didn't know that there was a X1950XT AGP card with 512MB??

It was obviously typo because there is no such beast unfortunately, but thanks for pointing it out.

there is an x1950 pro 512mb

 

[ManWithNoName]

Originally posted by: Margalus

Originally posted by: ManWithNoName

Originally posted by: evolucion8
I didn't know that there was a X1950XT AGP card with 512MB??

It was obviously typo because there is no such beast unfortunately, but thanks for pointing it out.

there is an x1950 pro 512mb

Yes we're aware of that. Per my previous post, I had a Sapphire and a HIS ICEQ3 Turbo which were both 512MB cards. The first one I had was a Visiontek which only had 256MB of GDDR3 however. What we were discussing was the X1950XT AGP part manufactured by Gecube. It was the only XT made in AGP and came with just 256MB of GDDR3.

 

[ManWithNoName]

Originally posted by: Denithor
GeCube x1950xt 256MB

Unfortunately for those AGP guys out there, deactivated product. Might be able to find a used one somewhere if you are really, really lucky. Otherwise just get the HD3850 AGP and be done with your rig until it's time for a full rebuild.

Actually it is fortunate, rather than unfortunate for those AGP guys out there that the Gecube X1950XT is no longer avaialbe. The HD 3850 blows it away, uses much less power, and is cheaper than the XT ever was.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: ManWithNoName

Actually it is fortunate, rather than unfortunate for those AGP guys out there that the Gecube X1950XT is no longer avaialbe. The HD 3850 blows it away, uses much less power, and is cheaper than the XT ever was.

Don't forget the UVD and higher quality options all 'round... heck, I suppose HDCP is worth a mention too.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
At this point its just cool to try and cook up archaic rigs based around an AGP platform and try and get it running well. Obviously the best candidate is going to be a s939 system with an X2 pushing 2.8GHz, but other rigs such as evolucion8's should still be chugging along in all but the most multithreaded CPU intensive games.

Of course we'd have to consider rules over what to do with newer AGP platforms...such as ASRock's 4CoreDual that supports 65nm Core 2s...(considering it has both a PCI-e and and AGP slot...) however its still available on the market and for relatively cheap, one could throw together such a rig for less money and hassle than it would take to try and hunt down truly archaic AGP platform parts (unless they already had them)

VIVA LA HOT-ROD AGP!

In non multi threaded gaming scenario, my CPU is even faster than an Athlon X2 4800+, it scores over 1,150 points in the CPU score over 3Dmark06 almost twice as my old Pentium 4 EE 3.4GHz (An Athlon X2 4800+ scores near 1,600), after all, the Intel Core 2 Duo is a derivate of the Pentium M who also inherited it's great gaming performance and high IPC, also the enhancements made on the Intel Core 2 Duo like Floating Point Performance barely improves the gaming performance, the Pentium M's FPU performance is a bit weak compared to the Pentium 4, but I just wanted gaming performance over anything else, I'm not a video encoder or a Maya / 3dsmax user.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...iumm-780_15.html#sect0

http://www.pugetsystems.com/max_pc.php

What you see is that in gaming benchmarks, the Pentium M 2.26GHz is beating out the AMD FX57, the AMD 4800+ dual core, the Intel 3.73GHz EE, the Intel 3.2GHz dual core, and even a dual 3.2GHz Xeon system!

http://www.digital-daily.com/cpu/pentium-m/index03.htm << seems that the link is no working anymore and that they removed the article, Can't seem to find it anywhere in their page

First, Pentium-M at 2.26 GHz (which is nominal for Intel® Pentium® M 780) beats all the other Intel processors built on the NetBurst architecture (including 955 Extreme Edition) at all the gaming applications. Also, its speed (in games, again) is higher than that for Athlon 3500+, and at some games it even surpasses 4400+/4800+

http://techreport.com/articles.x/8585/5

The Pentium M configurations extend their lead over the Pentium 4 in the Doom 3 benchmark, and once again the Pentium M 2.57GHz configuration takes the lead by a relatively large margin. The Extreme Edition's 2MB of L3 cache helps it to take down at least one of the Pentium M configurations here. Memory bandwidth seems to matter quite a bit in Far Cry, as the dual-channel CT-479 system at 2.16GHz manages to outdo even the overclocked DFI configuration.

http://www.pcper.com/article.p...=133&type=expert&pid=8

Hot damn, the CT-479 continues to really impress with its overclocked test setup! It takes the win in both 3D Mark 2001: SE and 3DMark05, and almost tops out in 3Dmark03.

At stock speeds, the Pentium M 755 did very well in our benchmarks, outrunning some of the lower-end Athlon 64s and Pentium 4s in the majority of the tests. The real power behind the Pentium M comes when overclocked though; and the Asus CT-479 enabled us to go 200 MHz faster than the the 855GME platforms had for a total speed of 2.6 GHz. At that level we saw the P-M out performing the Athlon 64 FX-55 processor in gaming and the Pentium 4 in some media tests. The power of this little mobile processor continues to impress me, and I am eagerly awaiting for Intel to adopt this basic architecture and expand on it for their entire line.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...owdoc.aspx?i=2382&p=12

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...iumm-780_15.html#sect0

http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=181

http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=178

Considers that most benchmarks there are using the default CPU clock speed, while I have it overclocked. I guess that you are the one who is chugging for talking without investigating first

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Auric

Originally posted by: ManWithNoName

Actually it is fortunate, rather than unfortunate for those AGP guys out there that the Gecube X1950XT is no longer avaialbe. The HD 3850 blows it away, uses much less power, and is cheaper than the XT ever was.

Don't forget the UVD and higher quality options all 'round... heck, I suppose HDCP is worth a mention too.

The GeCube X1950XT is also HDCP

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Denithor
GeCube x1950xt 256MB

Unfortunately for those AGP guys out there, deactivated product. Might be able to find a used one somewhere if you are really, really lucky. Otherwise just get the HD3850 AGP and be done with your rig until it's time for a full rebuild.

Why would anyone want one? .. the performance isn't much better than a much cheaper AGP x1950p/512M and there is also AGP 3850

At stock, but once overclocked, it goes out of reach of the X1950PRO (Except in very VRAM limited scenarios which the X1950PRO will have less impact on performance), and yes, the HD 3850 is even cheaper, and cooler!!

 

[ManWithNoName]

Originally posted by: evolucion8

Originally posted by: Auric

Originally posted by: ManWithNoName

Actually it is fortunate, rather than unfortunate for those AGP guys out there that the Gecube X1950XT is no longer avaialbe. The HD 3850 blows it away, uses much less power, and is cheaper than the XT ever was.

Don't forget the UVD and higher quality options all 'round... heck, I suppose HDCP is worth a mention too.

The GeCube X1950XT is also HDCP

HIS Digital has two new HD 3850 AGP cards if you haven't heard. One is an ICEQ3 Turbo Edition and the other comes with a stock cooler. Both however will offer full HD 1080p Support and HDMI. Also as I mentioned before, the HD 3850 Cards in general are half the size, have twice the memory, use less power, offer much higher performance, and cost a lot less. Well, compared to what the Gecube was selling for last year anyway. Now, don't get me wrong, the X1950XT WAS the AGP card to have last year if you wanted the fastest AGP solution available and money was no object. Fortunately for AGP users, technology marches on and sometimes it even gets cheaper.

If you haven't see the specs on the new HIS ICEQ3 HD 3850, here are a few ...

Model Name: HIS HD 3850 (Full HD 1080p) HDMI 512MB (256bit) GDDR3 Dual DL-DVI & TV (HDCP) AGP
Chipset: Radeon HD 3800 AGP Series
Pixel Pipelines: 320 stream processing units* (Unified)
Vertex Engines: 320 stream processing units* (Unified)
Manu. Process (Micron) 55nm
Memory Size: (MB) 512MB
Memory Type: GDDR3
Engine CLK: (MHz) 668
Memory CLK: (MHz) 1656
Memory Interface (bit) 256bit
Memory Bandwidth
Max. Resolution Two x 2560*1600 (Dual dual-link)
Bus Interface AGP 8X

 

[ManWithNoName]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Denithor
GeCube x1950xt 256MB

Unfortunately for those AGP guys out there, deactivated product. Might be able to find a used one somewhere if you are really, really lucky. Otherwise just get the HD3850 AGP and be done with your rig until it's time for a full rebuild.

Why would anyone want one? .. the performance isn't much better than a much cheaper AGP x1950p/512M and there is also AGP 3850

I agree, the X1950 Pro was the best bang for your buck. I owned the X1950XT and a few different X1950 Pro's last year. The XT was definitely faster, but as you said, the real-world difference wasn't anything to write home about.

 

[Denithor]

But we are probably reaching the point now where the AGP bandwidth will begin to limit the card throughput in a real way.

Also, even including the Pentium M class processors, the older generation CPUs are not going to be strong enough to really push the cards coming out now to their fullest potential.

So basically we are going to see diminishing returns from newer video cards on the AGP interface.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Denithor
But we are probably reaching the point now where the AGP bandwidth will begin to limit the card throughput in a real way.

Also, even including the Pentium M class processors, the older generation CPUs are not going to be strong enough to really push the cards coming out now to their fullest potential.

So basically we are going to see diminishing returns from newer video cards on the AGP interface.

The AGP is far from being bandwidth limited, I guess that the limits will be the CPU, because every card that is released on AGP tends to be faster and faster, while the CPU's on that platform ages mores, even though there's some ASRock mobos with C2D, most of their users are just using it as a step platform to upgrade to PCI-E, if the next generation of cards are at least twice as powerful as the current ones, the Pentium M and the Athlon X2 will start to bottleneck it, because even though is not as fast as a C2D, it's gaming performance still going strong, but unfortunately most AGP users are Pentium 4's and some low Athlon 64 3200+ or lower which are already showing some bottlenecks since the 7800GS.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: evolucion8

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
At this point its just cool to try and cook up archaic rigs based around an AGP platform and try and get it running well. Obviously the best candidate is going to be a s939 system with an X2 pushing 2.8GHz, but other rigs such as evolucion8's should still be chugging along in all but the most multithreaded CPU intensive games.

Of course we'd have to consider rules over what to do with newer AGP platforms...such as ASRock's 4CoreDual that supports 65nm Core 2s...(considering it has both a PCI-e and and AGP slot...) however its still available on the market and for relatively cheap, one could throw together such a rig for less money and hassle than it would take to try and hunt down truly archaic AGP platform parts (unless they already had them)

VIVA LA HOT-ROD AGP!

In non multi threaded gaming scenario, my CPU is even faster than an Athlon X2 4800+, it scores over 1,150 points in the CPU score over 3Dmark06 almost twice as my old Pentium 4 EE 3.4GHz (An Athlon X2 4800+ scores near 1,600), after all, the Intel Core 2 Duo is a derivate of the Pentium M who also inherited it's great gaming performance and high IPC, also the enhancements made on the Intel Core 2 Duo like Floating Point Performance barely improves the gaming performance, the Pentium M's FPU performance is a bit weak compared to the Pentium 4, but I just wanted gaming performance over anything else, I'm not a video encoder or a Maya / 3dsmax user.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...iumm-780_15.html#sect0

http://www.pugetsystems.com/max_pc.php

What you see is that in gaming benchmarks, the Pentium M 2.26GHz is beating out the AMD FX57, the AMD 4800+ dual core, the Intel 3.73GHz EE, the Intel 3.2GHz dual core, and even a dual 3.2GHz Xeon system!

http://www.digital-daily.com/cpu/pentium-m/index03.htm << seems that the link is no working anymore and that they removed the article, Can't seem to find it anywhere in their page

First, Pentium-M at 2.26 GHz (which is nominal for Intel® Pentium® M 780) beats all the other Intel processors built on the NetBurst architecture (including 955 Extreme Edition) at all the gaming applications. Also, its speed (in games, again) is higher than that for Athlon 3500+, and at some games it even surpasses 4400+/4800+

http://techreport.com/articles.x/8585/5

The Pentium M configurations extend their lead over the Pentium 4 in the Doom 3 benchmark, and once again the Pentium M 2.57GHz configuration takes the lead by a relatively large margin. The Extreme Edition's 2MB of L3 cache helps it to take down at least one of the Pentium M configurations here. Memory bandwidth seems to matter quite a bit in Far Cry, as the dual-channel CT-479 system at 2.16GHz manages to outdo even the overclocked DFI configuration.

http://www.pcper.com/article.p...=133&type=expert&pid=8

Hot damn, the CT-479 continues to really impress with its overclocked test setup! It takes the win in both 3D Mark 2001: SE and 3DMark05, and almost tops out in 3Dmark03.

At stock speeds, the Pentium M 755 did very well in our benchmarks, outrunning some of the lower-end Athlon 64s and Pentium 4s in the majority of the tests. The real power behind the Pentium M comes when overclocked though; and the Asus CT-479 enabled us to go 200 MHz faster than the the 855GME platforms had for a total speed of 2.6 GHz. At that level we saw the P-M out performing the Athlon 64 FX-55 processor in gaming and the Pentium 4 in some media tests. The power of this little mobile processor continues to impress me, and I am eagerly awaiting for Intel to adopt this basic architecture and expand on it for their entire line.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...owdoc.aspx?i=2382&p=12

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...iumm-780_15.html#sect0

http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=181

http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=178

Considers that most benchmarks there are using the default CPU clock speed, while I have it overclocked. I guess that you are the one who is chugging for talking without investigating first

No offense, but that CPU would get raped by the likes of SupCom or FSX...

And in a world where the most sought after CPU for enthusiast/gaming systems is currently the E8400 (which has 3x the cache, twice as many cores, and a stock clock rate of 3GHz - all evolved from your CPU's architecture...), your system is unfortunately beginning to become rather outdated

I'm sorry you took 'offense' to it, but I thought I was being generous

I really thought I made sure to word it in a way where I was complimenting your system whilst remaining realistic. As awesome as your system sounds for such a 'hot-rod' scenario, I'd still rather have an AGP s939 X2 system (or opeteron 1xx) @ 2.7GHz, because dualcore does matter. Although your system does have far more sex appeal to it for being far more rare and rather unorthodox, which earns you bonus points in my book because I like that.

 

[evolucion8]

Nah, is no offense, it's true that it's starting to become outdated, is not like it will stop working in a few years because is outdated, after all there's no application that can be run on a Core 2 Duo that for example, a Pentium 4 can't run, but for sure it will bottleneck the next generation of cards. I just wanted to hold on a little longer on my AGP platform while having something that not many people would have, and wait to see the Quad Core price drops.

Also even if FSX or SupCom are heavily multi threaded, there's no CPU that can double your FPS because of that because most games today tends to be more GPU limited than CPU limited (Unless if you plays at 800x600 or lower)

 

[kopema]

People use the word "outdated" like they're talking about hairstyles instead of hardware.

AGP won't be obsolete until somebody who actually HAS upgraded their video card says: "Damn, my computer is all 'bottlenecked' and won't play games any faster. I wish to heck I'd saved that $180 and bought a whole new system instead!"

Until I start seeing a few more posts like that, I'll consider it safe to assume that the obituaries are somewhat exaggerated.