Will PCI-Express kill AGP like the way AGP killed PCI?

[Totti]

I know it is still a bit premature to speculate...

I am ready for a new PC but I don't know if I should wait for PCI-Express and DDRII to come out....
My plan right now is to wait until Doom3 and HL2 to come out and see what will be the requirements for the next-gen games.

I know the waiting game does not work in the PC industry as new stuff will always come out. But I am the type of person that will buy a new PC and use it for the next 5 years without many major upgrades.

What do you guys think?

 

[mrman3k]

Well PCI Express will replace current PCI, but that will not happen until at the earliest this time next year. So if you need a new PC, do it now as there will be no new products for the next several months.

If you want to know more about PCI Express, just ask and I can tell.

 

[RIGorous1]

be ready to wait at least an entire year to see the results if you choose to wait...

I've been waiting almost a full year for SATA hd's and ddrII to emerge and no luck. SATA hd's did come out but they weren't what the industry made them out to be in performance.

agp was invented for the purposes of the growing graphics pipeline and I wouldn't be supprised if they are working on a 16x version right now.

even if pci-express takes over, the manufacturer's have to spend a chunk of money R+Ding the interface, then actually spend the big bucks manufacturing it. While the AGP standard has already been utilized for many years now and is backwards compatible with every mobo since 1995 (albeit at agp 1x) and maybe even before. If they switch they'd loose a big market share to those gamers who don't upgrade their motherboard often, and don't care if they have to downgrade the video cards performance.

 

[Totti]

Yes mrman3k please tell me a bit more about it

So PCI-Express will be replacing both AGP and current PCI?

 

[Matt84]

AGP didn't replace PCI. AGP just took over graphics duties as a dedicated bus. AGP is like pci on steriods
AGP came in around 1997 with the release of the Pentium II running at speeds of 233 and 266 MHz based on the old 440LX chipset.

It doesn't matter if PCI Express comes out - Doom 3 Alpha ran fine on my AGP 4X GF4 Ti4600 and that was buggy and dodgy Alpha code so the full version will run a lot better A GF4 or ATI 9X00 card on an AGP interface will run Doom 3 perfectly fine

 

[Adul]

the graphics slot in PCI express should be twice the current 8xAGP standard with room to grow.

 

[EdipisReks]

iirc, AGP 8X is the last AGP.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I think it will be several years before PCI-X cards are better than AGP8X, so waiting for it is pointless.

For the current chipsets, even 8X isn't really needed (it's 99% marketing hype) so you can figure that the next chipset generation might need 8X for full performance and 1-2 chipsets after that there might be a use for bandwidth above 8X.

DDRII will be hideously expensive for a while after it comes out, and DDR400 seems to work just fine for P4s up to at least 3 GHz. So chances are you'll pay a huge premium for a tiny performance gain if you decide to buy the fastest P4 plus DDRII when they're finally introduced.

As always though, the longer you wait the faster a system will be at a given price point. So wait as long as you can stand to before upgrading.

 

[Oxonium]

DaveSimmons, I think you are confusing PCI-X and PCI Express. They are very different interface standards, as explained at the bottom of this page:
PCI-X and PCI Express

I do agree with you on everything else though. AGP8x isn't even being taken advantage of yet. Heck, is AGP4x even being maxed out? It's another marketing standard to sell motherboards and graphics cards.

I think DDRII will catch on much faster than PCI Express but it'll be expensive. It seems like DDRII may be the only memory option to provide enough bandwidth for the 1200 MHz FSB expected when the Tejas P4 arrives. Unless they implement a quad-channel memory bus, which would be very expensive.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Yes, and as mentioed before the next generation cards *might* use more bandwidth coming closer to AGP8X's limit. It was mentioned that 8x is marketing hype and that it absolutely true. If you run a card in AGP 4X mode or AGP 8X mode, your performance will not change at all. So you can see that if there is no difference in 4x and 8x in terms of performance, we don't even use 50% of the bandwidth available to us today. With that being said, there is still a few years of times before our 8X connections will become a bottleneck.

Also, if you remember when the AGP connection was initially released, it performed slightly slower than the PCI version of the cards probably because the drivers and connections were still new and not highly optimized.

Waiting on PCI Express and DDR2 at this point is useless because at launch, its prices will be high and there won't be much need until as mentioed before, Tejas is released.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Oxonium
DaveSimmons, I think you are confusing PCI-X and PCI Express. They are very different interface standards, as explained at the bottom of this page:
PCI-X and PCI Express

Guilty as charged, thanks for the link. I've been skiiming articles on both and merged them together for improved efficiency

 

[Tab]

Well, S-ATA isnt really being that efficent due to the idiots who decided to put it on the already overcrowed 133mb/s PCI Bus :|

PCI Express will eventually replace PCI and AGP. As for when, nobody honestly knows!

 

[Oxonium]

Guilty as charged, thanks for the link. I've been skiiming articles on both and merged them together for improved efficiency

I used to confuse them too. :beer: You'd think with the industry's penchant for 3-letter acronyms (ACR, CNR, AGP, ISA, PCI, PAT, CSA, USB, MMX, SSE, IDE, ATA, DDR, EDO, CAS, RAS, IRQ, DVD,.....) they could have come up with a new one for this interface to make it less confusing with PCI and PCI-X. Unless all the combinations of 3 letters have been used up already.