Video-related Rant: AGP 8X is just a marketing ploy people, it doesn't add anything functional yet!

[jiffylube1024]

I think too many people here are getting the impression that AGP 8X cards are twice as fast as AGP 4X cards. It's just a necessary transitional upgrade for video card and motherboard manufacturers; please don't buy a GeForce Ti4200 8X just to replace your antiquated GeForce Ti4200 4X which will give you no gain.

A new video card based on a faster chipset will give you a faster graphics card (ie GeForce 2 > GeForce 3 > GeForce 4 (not MX) ). A same-family card with more memory should give you at least some upgrade and better speed at high resolutions or with features like AntiAliasing (ie Radeon 8500 64MB > Radeon 8500 128MB). AGP 8X will not give you a tangible speed increase at all, and all AGP 8X ports are backwards compatible with AGP 4X cards, so don't think your card will be worthless or that you have to upgrade.

Other marketing terms that mean nothing:

Intel's NetBurst (all it means is the technology inherent in the P4 and it's 400/533 MHz FSB)
AMD's QuantiSpeed Architecture (again, means either the double-pumped FSB of all Athlons, or just bull $#!T)
Sega's Blast Processing (remember how it made our Genesis systems go so much faster!)
ATA/133


on and on...

Forgive my rant here, but I'm seeing too many posts here where people are getting the wrong idea or are being misled by certain terms.

I hope this helps someone from making a pointless upgrade!

 

[oldfart]

Dont forget ATA133!

 

[Tab]

Heh! I second that!

 

[Geotpf]

How about Intel "Extreme" Graphics? Extremely mediocre, more like it...

 

[Shazam]

Heck, even AGP 1X doesn' t do anything useful.

 

[BFG10K]

Heck, even AGP 1X doesn' t do anything useful.

That's a pretty clueless comment.

 

[Viper96720]

Actually 8x agp is a part of agp 3.0 specs. That's used in marketing ploys. Uninformed sees a higher number and automatically assumes must be better. I see all the posts also about upgrading to a 8x card when it's not necessary. Checked out the specs and it looks like this will be the last step. Next up is pci express. When that comes out they'll probably give it some fancy smancy name.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: oldfart
Dont forget ATA133!

wow, how could I forget one of the best ones!!?? Nice one oldfart!

 

[Budmantom]

P4's really do make the internet faster .... don't they?

 

[Tab]

LOL!

 

[merlocka]

Wah.

1) Simply understanding that marketing locks on to any feature which can differentiate them from a competitor should be reward enough for you. No need to rant, it's the reality of the biz. Why do you think PCB's are red now and video cards come with fancy heatsinks... it's all about differentiating products which (in many cases) are all based on the same reference design.

2) People who know better aren't the demographic targeted by the marketing.

3) It's alot easier to say Netburst than to list off all the architectural differences in a P4 vs a P3... etc...

4) ATA133, AGP8X, etc... these sell computers and components. We learned that people want this stuff regardless of whether or not it's benificial (3dfx taught us that).

So, congrats. You have figured out the evils of marketing. <back> pat pat </back>

oh yeah, and who on Anandtech actually would think that a AGP4x card is half as fast as an 8x card? You?re preaching to the choir here. You should take your act on the road and educate the mindless masses who buy e-machines.

 

[Shazam]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Heck, even AGP 1X doesn' t do anything useful.

That's a pretty clueless comment.

Uh, no it isn't. AGP was and is hardly the panacea that it was claimed to be when it was first introduced. Remember how AGP was supposed to remove the need for onboard video memory? So why does my Radeon 9500 have 128 megs on it still?

 

[oldfart]

oh yeah, and who on Anandtech actually would think that a AGP4x card is half as fast as an 8x card? You?re preaching to the choir here. You should take your act on the road and educate the mindless masses who buy e-machines.

Have you seen the number of "which mobo with AGP8X/ATA133" should I buy threads here?

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: oldfart

oh yeah, and who on Anandtech actually would think that a AGP4x card is half as fast as an 8x card? You?re preaching to the choir here. You should take your act on the road and educate the mindless masses who buy e-machines.

Have you seen the number of "which mobo with AGP8X/ATA133" should I buy threads here?

As opposed to all the "which mobo with AGP2X/ATA66 should I buy" threads?

Of course these topics are of interest as all the features are present in the latest and greatest mainboards. It's not like AGP8X is the reason people on Anandtech are interested in buying nForce 2 boards.

Originally posted by: Shazam

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Heck, even AGP 1X doesn' t do anything useful.

That's a pretty clueless comment.

Uh, no it isn't. AGP was and is hardly the panacea that it was claimed to be when it was first introduced. Remember how AGP was supposed to remove the need for onboard video memory? So why does my Radeon 9500 have 128 megs on it still?

Ok. First of all, the guys who came up with AGP didn't give a rats @ss about you or me or a geforce3. They wanted to allow a platform which could share system memory for frame buffer / graphics texture. It's all about integration. Many PC's which sell at Best Buy today have ZERO add-in cards (maybe an AMR for modem) because everything you need is integrated.

Second of all, without AGP providing a higher bandwidth bus for geometries your fancy-dancy Radeon 9500 wouldn't perform nearly as well as it does. Although I hate 3dMark, this page illustrates a 18% performance improvement from no-AGP to 4x AGP on a geforce4 board.

In a 3dFark world 18% is about the difference between your fancy Radeon 9500 and a Geforce3.

 

[vexingv]

well these days all the new cards coming out are 8x and HD that are ata133 are just the same price as the ata100....so its not like we're paying more, and since we're spending the money we might as well get any extra features

 

[oldfart]

What I meant is the people asking what motherboard to buy basing their decision on "does it have ATA133 or does it have AGP8X". Neither of these matter, but do not hinder performance either. Whatever floats your boat. I've seen plenty of post where PCB color is a determining factor as well.

 

[DZip]

I want to upgrade from a GForce2 GTS 32MB to a GForce4 TI4200 128MB. Are you saying that I should not buy the 8X version? My next MB might be a VIA KT400A which is AGP 3.0 compliant. Will the 8X AGP card not work well with my Epox 8K7A+ with the AMD chipset?

 

[Tab]

Heh. Soyo's Silver Colored Motherboards dissapate heat better than green colored ones.

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

Originally posted by: DZip
I want to upgrade from a GForce2 GTS 32MB to a GForce4 TI4200 128MB. Are you saying that I should not buy the 8X version? My next MB might be a VIA KT400A which is AGP 3.0 compliant. Will the 8X AGP card not work well with my Epox 8K7A+ with the AMD chipset?

If u can find urself a 4x version, then buy it! Cause the performance difference is not there, and you save urself your hard earned cash.

 

[BFG10K]

Uh, no it isn't. AGP was and is hardly the panacea that it was claimed to be when it was first introduced.

AGP has done as much for the graphics industry as the video cards themselves. Without it your video cards would be crawling and your PCI bus would be completely saturated and you'd likely have performance issues with other devices on it as well, not just the graphics card. PCI cards see a 20%-50% performance drop over AGP cards because they're starved for bandwidth and because they lose the advanced pipeline transfers that AGP provides.

Remember how AGP was supposed to remove the need for onboard video memory? So why does my Radeon 9500 have 128 megs on it still?

That's true and in order to achieve this AGP was designed for maximum bandwidth, a side-effect which modern cards naturally take advantage of with their massive textures, vast amounts of geometry data and pixel/vertex shading. And the more work that is offloaded onto the video card, the more traffic is required to be sent to the GPU, and the more bandwidth is required.

AGP x8 is a natural progression of this and provides the incremental upgrade we need to keep things going into the future. No, it's not double the speed but in time the gap between AGP x4 and AGP x8 will grow. DDR RAM wasn't double the speed of SDRAM when it was first introduced but you try running a 2800+ or a 3.06 GHz on SDRAM today and see how far you get. If we had listened to all those "we don't need DDR, it's all marketing hype" types back then the computer industry would be screwed today. Fortunately the hardware designers managed to look past such clueless comments and planned for the future.

The same thing applies to AGP. Try running AGP x1 on a 2800+ or a 3.06 GHz P4 and you'll see a very large difference in performance compared to AGP x4, especially if you have a fast GPU like the Radeon 9700 Pro which sucks up any traffic it gets, and especially if you play modern games. AGP x8 is not a necessity yet but we will need it eventually so it's good to start planning for it.

 

[nRollo]

Sure Jiffylube, you say that because you don't have it.

LOL- I think most people here know this?

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Uh, no it isn't. AGP was and is hardly the panacea that it was claimed to be when it was first introduced.

If we had listened to all those "we don't need DDR, it's all marketing hype" types back then the computer idustry would be screwed today.

actualy most people still don't need ddr today.

 

[BFG10K]

actualy most people still don't need ddr today.

What does anyone really need? Food, water, oxygen and protection from the elements. That's about it.

But that's not what I mean.

 

[jiffylube1024]

LOL, time to bring in the big guns... the "BFG's" if you will. Looks like my thread has generated some interest, and that's good. I'll add some replies to questions/quotes in this thread:

Originally posted by: merlocka


...So, congrats. You have figured out the evils of marketing. <back> pat pat </back>

oh yeah, and who on Anandtech actually would think that a AGP4x card is half as fast as an 8x card? You?re preaching to the choir here. You should take your act on the road and educate the mindless masses who buy e-machines.

I didn't create this thread to point out an easy answer to a problem, I was adressing confusion a surprising number of AT'ers had (4 posts in the first two pages of video were on buying a new AGP 8X video card, with the focus especially on how AGP 8X makes things so much faster). The claim that AGP 8X offers no *current* benefit is obviously not news to the 1000 post members here, but guess what? There are many other members on these forums as well. Many people join up because they have a specific problem or concern, and this is a big one.

Originally posted by: Rollo
Sure Jiffylube, you say that because you don't have it.

LOL- I think most people here know this?

I'm 99% sure this is sarcasm. Just in case it isn't, read some reviews of the new GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8X and see the amazing difference AGP 3.0 makes!

Originally posted by: DZip
I want to upgrade from a GForce2 GTS 32MB to a GForce4 TI4200 128MB. Are you saying that I should not buy the 8X version? My next MB might be a VIA KT400A which is AGP 3.0 compliant. Will the 8X AGP card not work well with my Epox 8K7A+ with the AMD chipset?

Ah, finally a legitmate question, and one this thread is exactly here to answer. DZip AGP 8X is a welcome feature on your video card, and has perfect backwards compatibility with AGP 4X slots (still 1.5V). Just don't pay extra just to get AGP 8X - it is no faster than the AGP 4X version of the same card. If the card comes with it, great. If not, then it makes no difference .

BFG10K I think you need to lighten up a bit! AGP is a very good standard and definately necessary to get the most out of today's video cards. However, it has most definately not "done as much for the graphics industry as the video cards themselves" (direct quote). 66 MHz 64-bit PCI cards would have done just the same as AGP 2X to this point, for example. The whole issue here is not that AGP 8X is worthless (note this thread isn't called "AGP 8X is worthless"), just that right now it does not add any tangible performance gain, and unaware buyers may be mislead into thinking it's much faster. It's pretty obvious that if you can get AGP 8X for the same price, why not get it. I'm not saying stop progression and development of technologies! Just beware of the marketing machine tricking you into thinking you "need" the feature right away.

 

[stockspeedsrule]

I would definitely have to agree with jiffylube1024. AGP 8X gives no tangible performance gains currently. When the 8X versions of GF4 MX 440 and TI 4200 were released as a consequence of pressure from the oems (for obvious reasons), THG posted some benchmarks. The 8X versions were clocked higher than the regular versions which gave them a slight lead over the 4X parts. When they clocked the 4X parts equal to the 8X parts, the framerate was equal. The fact is most of todays applications arent really taking advantage of 4X. So are absolutely safe with purchasing a 4X card. Remember the hype around the release of the GF3? It seemed like DX8 is a must have for any gamer and it is only 13-14 months later that attractive games truly dependant on DX8 were released, and people who spent 199 on a TI 4200 were better off in all respects than those who spent 399 on the GF3. My point is it never makes sense to be an early adopter. Upgrade stuff when it will give you a tangible performance increase and not just for the sake of marketing hypes.