Pci-e...

Mousey · Jan 24, 2007, 05:16 PM

i think i'm going to take cover after i post this topic, since a lot of you will be using PCI-E...

to cut a long story short, I HATE PCI-EXPRESS...
did you know there hasn't actually been a Game or application that can take full advantage of AGP's 8 speed bandwith?

I mean if companies were to start producing mainboards with Dual AGP slots on them, and card companies start producing AGP cards with the ability to link em together, that would be so immensely cool, and people like me who can't afford all the other technologies (Disadvantages in my opinion) that come hand in hand with PCI-E such as DDR2, on top of that i can't seem to find a PCI-E mainboard that would take my Celeron, since it has a 533MHz FSB and they all seem to come only wanting to take 800 or higher, sheesh <_<

*Takes Cover* gimme your best shot *whimper*

kris23 · Jan 24, 2007, 09:11 PM

lol haha ya that is kinda true..... i mean i was convinced the 7800GS was utilizing it 100% then i see the X1950PRO and soon to be X1950XT agp cards..... but there is bandwith problems for dual GPU cards like the 7950GX2 and such....

besides..... if you built an awesome graphics bus and it was fully tested, convenient, cheap and ready to go out to market....... wouldnt you want to sell it? AGP's end is very near anyway.... PCI express is not only going to replace AGP but PCI slots as well.... thanks to the abilty of the slots to communicate via chipset

oh yea....i bet if you try pumping out a game like FEAR at 2560x1600 res with all the settings maximum at like 120FPS you think that the AGP bus will keep up..? no it wont its too much to put out....i mean the HIS X1950PRO 512 probably can do it on 1280x1024 at 40 or so FPS the AGP slot is all but dead.. its certainly possible to come out with DX10 on it but it wont be as good....its just about gone..... your machine and mine are similar with the exception of the processor..... there can always be a better card than the 8800GTX for AGP but more than likely it would be more expensive to make due to the limitation on the bus

kris23 · Jan 24, 2007, 09:18 PM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157092 oh yea... if u want a pci express support for a 775 celeron then this board is what you need...but of course you need to get a new processor anyway..... but why do you need PCI express? your AGP slot can last you right?

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jan 25, 2007, 12:21 PM

There's nothing wrong with AGP. Still serves me quite excellently.

But I guess you don't wait for the highway to get all clogged up every day to start expanding right?

Judas · Jan 25, 2007, 12:35 PM

Well actually there are other benifits to PCI-EX for graphics, it's not all about the bandwidth caps being raised substatially, but that it's more efficient in how it handles the data, and how quickly it can handle it. There are other things including the power output that is possible on the cards as well (my gaud, this is information i remember back before PCI-EX was even launched, and by a nvidia guy talkinga bout it and showing how the paths and data moves and is sorted and handled by other processes including the northbridge additional chips for it and how the cpu gets a little less work to do)

Plus, Pci-EX (rev 2) is due out shortly to from what i understand further increaseing the capabilities.

And like h3x said, it's better to expand while your ahead, and still have room to work, then it is to get overloaded and have no place to work at all.

Matth · Jan 27, 2007, 02:03 PM

I have PCI-E, but what I have on it would not tax AGP 8x.

I'd say the switch to PCI-E was premature, badly planned, badly implemented.

The more important limit that it addressed, was the shared bandwidth limit of PCI, though the appearance of PCI-E x1 cards for former PCI tasks (PCI-E x1 has a greater bandwidth than PCI for each slot) has been very slow.
Most PCI-E systems still have 2 or 3 PCI slots, still with the same shared bandwidth issue, and a lot of accessory cards are still in PCI format.

Now the bandwidth per slot would not have increased, but it ought to have been possible to implement independent PCI slot bandwidth and retain full PCI compatibility, similarly, there seems to be no particular reason that dual AGP could not have been developed, quite possibly in conjunction with independent PCI slots.

After all, early PCI tended to have rigourous "PIC" mapping to ISA interrupt numbers, then with 32 bit operating systems, came the evolution to "APIC", with extra interrupt numbers.

In short, PCI-E wasn't needed, and was the wrong solution.

Lest we forget, there were also some enhancements to PCI, taking that to 66MHz or 64 bit, but retaining backward compatibilty.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jan 30, 2007, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matth

Lest we forget, there were also some enhancements to PCI, taking that to 66MHz or 64 bit, but retaining backward compatibilty.

Yeah but you have to understand how expensive that is... that's a lot of traces to be running in parallel which is no small engineering feat.

I see the move to PCI-e as the same thing from IDE to SATA. Drives got there a bit quicker with RAID arrays and what not than did video cards in terms of bandwidth use but then along comes SLI and bam, AGP wouldn't support that (even if you could run 2 cards on it).

Its the parallel to serial movement... its simply more cost effective and a hell of a lot easier to implement and less expensive.

I dread to think what an enthusast SLI mobo would look like using 64 bit PCI-X slots

Judas · Jan 30, 2007, 04:47 PM

huge? HATX for factor

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jan 30, 2007, 04:54 PM

Exactly... it'd be massive. Without PCI-e I don't think SLI would have taken off again.