PCI graphics card on new faster PCI slots?

[Lonyo]

If the PCI interface ever gets faster for desktop PC's, is there a chance that it could be better for graphics cards, if the bandwidth is big enough? I don't know what figures are aimed for with whatever new thing is in the works (PCI Express), but would it be better, or competitive with AGP slots? Especially as 8x doesn't give performance increase over 4x, so you'd only need a certain amount of bandwidth to match the AGP speed.

 

[zephyrprime]

They're planning to drop AGP when PCI express comes out. I wonder. Does AGP even offer much of a performance boost over PCI? Sure the bandwidth is higher but do 3d games shuttle that much data back and forth to the video card?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
They're planning to drop AGP when PCI express comes out. I wonder. Does AGP even offer much of a performance boost over PCI? Sure the bandwidth is higher but do 3d games shuttle that much data back and forth to the video card?

Yes, ever since the GF2 days. Look at benchmarks for any modern PCi cards and you'll see they're much slower than their AGP counterparts.