how important is AGP

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zlo

I am only capable of 4x agp with a 9700 pro. If i had a mb capable of 8x,
would i see a difference in performance and framerates?

Also, would going from 266(133DDR) fsb to an intel running at 800 make a big
difference in performance? How important is FSB speed?

Ok one more dumbass question to end the night.. I am confused.. amd boards
run at 400 fsb at the moment right? and intel has one that is 800mhz fsb.
does that necassarily mean the intel board is twice as fast?
 
I am only capable of 4x agp with a 9700 pro. If i had a mb capable of 8x,
would i see a difference in performance and framerates?
Click to expand...
Hardly any. Most games will load in the textures required in the game
at the start of the level, so it will have little to no difference
while playing a game.
 
I am only capable of 4x agp with a 9700 pro. If i had a mb capable of 8x,
would i see a difference in performance and framerates?
Click to expand...
nope, really not at all nothing different, well you might see something
statistically insignificant.
Also, would going from 266(133DDR) fsb to an intel running at 800 make a big
difference in performance? How important is FSB speed?
Click to expand...
yep, very
Ok one more dumbass question to end the night.. I am confused.. amd boards
run at 400 fsb at the moment right? and intel has one that is 800mhz fsb.
does that necassarily mean the intel board is twice as fast?
Click to expand...
nope

Intel and AMD are both using 200 MHz FSB, its the "effective" numbers
they're confusing you with, i.e. DDR and quad-pipelining multipliers.
The best Intels are faster than the best AMDs right now though, and an
"800 MHz" Intel board's memory will benchmark higher than a VIA or
nForce2 400 MHz board by a good margin of bandwidth. But the overall
performance isn't as divergent. The best bang for your buck is still
the XP 2500+, which can be had for ~$80 USD.
 
zlo said:
I am only capable of 4x agp with a 9700 pro. If i had a mb capable of 8x,
would i see a difference in performance and framerates?
Click to expand...

I doubt it.
Also, would going from 266(133DDR) fsb to an intel running at 800 make a
big difference in performance? How important is FSB speed?
Click to expand...

If you did that with the FSB and left all else equal, you would see an
improvement. The difficulty is in saying how much... it depends how memory
bandwidth limited your application is.
Ok one more dumbass question to end the night.. I am confused.. amd boards
run at 400 fsb at the moment right? and intel has one that is 800mhz fsb.
does that necassarily mean the intel board is twice as fast?
Click to expand...

Lets straighten this out.

Fastest Athlon XP FSB is 200MHz DDR, which is 400M transfers per second
(tps).
Fastest P4 System Bus is 200MHz Quad Pumped, which is 800M tps.

Now, just because it's theoretically possible to transfer twice as much data
in the same time down equivelent buses, doesn't mean that the processor is
necessarily capable of that - it's not a linear relationship, the efficiency
(the amount you can actually get across the bus under normal circumstances,
as a proportion of the total) tends to drop off as the FSB speed approaches
the clock speed. Much more important than that however, is the fact that
memory bandwidth is rarely the determining factor on maximum speed in most
applications. The only one I can think of, is a memory benchmark.

So how much difference that doubling will make is completely dependant on
the application. I could write a 10 line C program that acesses memory a
few times at the start and never again, and will scale linearly with CPU
clock speed, memory bandwidth won't affect the time at all. Conversely I
could write a 10 line C program that scales linearly with memory bandwidth
and CPU speed will be irrelevant. But neither of those applications are
"typical", they would be written merely to prove a point.

Ben
 
So increasing your ram on your MB would give you better performance? How
much ram is too much ram? Thanks for any info...
 
Cosmic said:
So increasing your ram on your MB would give you better performance?
Click to expand...

That question appears to be about quantity as opposed to speed. The answer
is yes, if you need it.
How much ram is too much ram? Thanks for any info...
Click to expand...

You can never have too much RAM. There's little point in purchasing more
than you regularly use, however. In my opinion, most people will get away
quite happily with 256MBs these days. The gamers and most developers should
have 512MB. Hardcore gamers and developers should have a 1GB. Any more is
rarely needed on a desktop PC. Servers tend to different in that
performance can be gained all over the place with more RAM (for example,
they can cache more/larger files that will be used more regularly). Thats a
very simple guideline.

To find peak RAM useage since you powered on... go to Task Manager ->
Peformance and look at Peak Commit Charge.

Ben
 
the XP 2500+, which can be had for ~$80 USD.

Steve [Inglo]
Click to expand...

Is this the Barton core chip you are referring to? If so, why is this the
CPU to get? I see a lot of praise about it, but I am not sure why.

Right now I am running an Athlon XP 2000+ Palomino core chip on an MSI
KT3-Ultra2 motherboard.

Thanks

Joe
 
Joe727 said:
Is this the Barton core chip you are referring to? If so, why is this the
CPU to get? I see a lot of praise about it, but I am not sure why.
Click to expand...

I'll give you 3 good reasons:
1) Because for any given clock speed, the Barton is the fastest core.
2) That Barton is one of the fastest clocking cores available.
3) The 2500+ is the cheapest CPU with the Barton core.

Ben
 
Ben Pope said:
I'll give you 3 good reasons:
1) Because for any given clock speed, the Barton is the fastest core.
2) That Barton is one of the fastest clocking cores available.
3) The 2500+ is the cheapest CPU with the Barton core.
Click to expand...

Good list. The main reason for #1 is CACHE. Assuming equal fsb and clock
speed:

The K6-3 is faster than the K6-2 because of cache. The Pentium is faster
than the Celeron because of cache. The Athlon is faster than the Duron
because of cache. The Barton is faster than the XP because of cache.

System memory is pretty fast these days, but cache is still a lot faster.
 
Skid said:
Good list. The main reason for #1 is CACHE. Assuming equal fsb and clock
speed:
Click to expand...

The only reason is Cache. More cache -> greater hit ratio -> better
performance.
System memory is pretty fast these days, but cache is still a lot faster.
Click to expand...

Indeed.

Ben
 
Skid said:
Good list. <snip>
Click to expand...

Not really enough points for a list though, but I thnk it demonstrates the
points well. Not that I'm an impulsive list-writer or anything:
1) I hardly write lists.
2) Oh dear...

:-P

Ben
 
Ben Pope said:
I'll give you 3 good reasons:
1) Because for any given clock speed, the Barton is the fastest core.
2) That Barton is one of the fastest clocking cores available.
3) The 2500+ is the cheapest CPU with the Barton core.

Ben
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

Joe
 
Skid said:
Good list. The main reason for #1 is CACHE. Assuming equal fsb and clock
speed:

The K6-3 is faster than the K6-2 because of cache. The Pentium is faster
than the Celeron because of cache. The Athlon is faster than the Duron
because of cache. The Barton is faster than the XP because of cache.

System memory is pretty fast these days, but cache is still a lot faster.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info about the cache.

Joe
 
Joe727 said:
faster.

Thanks for the info about the cache.
Click to expand...

To upgrade or not upgrade is the real cache.
Kind of a cache-22 if you think about it.

Somebody please stop me.

;)
 
Tim said:
To upgrade or not upgrade is the real cache.
Kind of a cache-22 if you think about it.

Somebody please stop me.
Click to expand...

If I cache you doing it again I'll let you know.

Ben
 
Is this the Barton core chip you are referring to? If so, why is this the
CPU to get? I see a lot of praise about it, but I am not sure why.
Click to expand...

If you can get a model number (AQXEA or something like that) that has been
reviewed as highly overclockable then the 2500+ is the baby to get.

I put mine in an ASUS deluxe nForce2 Mobo, and moved the multiplier up a
notch 3 days after bedding in. Runs like a dream at 12.5x 333 (2.1GHz), with
a Silent Boost ThermalTake fan. (This fan is great BTW- 21dB!)

If I had 400Mhz memory then I'd lower the mult and up the FSB, which is the
best strategy that the 2500+. Most people can turn this into a 3200+, which
is at least on a par with a P4 2.6GHz.

Problem is that decently timed 400MHz memory is expensive.

I could go beyond 2.1GHz with this, but don't need to until more hungry
games come out.
 
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