Latest technology??

  • Thread starter Thread starter SHRED
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SHRED

Okay I have been out of touch for a while with the latest video tech
stuff. PCIx16 slot?
I left off at the AGPx8 slot stage.
Would someone please explain(breifly) the latest slot technology
advantage and provide some good links so I can study more?
Thanks
 
SHRED said:
Okay I have been out of touch for a while with the latest video tech
stuff. PCIx16 slot?
I left off at the AGPx8 slot stage.
Would someone please explain(breifly) the latest slot technology
advantage and provide some good links so I can study more?
Click to expand...

Google "PCI Express" and you'll find a lot of information. Basically Intel's
churning the market with a new slot whose only purpose is to sell
hardware--it doesn't do anything that older designs didn't do but Intel's
incorporated it in all their new chipsets and removed AGP and so the market
is kind of forced to follow along. Unless their plan backfires on them,
which I'm kind of hoping it will.

They're calling it "PCI Express" (there is also an older high performance
design called "PCI-X" that is used in servers and workstations--I'm sure
that "PCI Express" was chosen as a name so that it could easily be confused
with "PCI-X") but it is not PCI in anything but name--PCI Express boards
will not fit PCI slots and PCI boards will not fit PCI Express slots and
the signalling is completely different. The major benefit over AGP is that
there can be multiple PCI Express slots in a machine, the major benefit
over regular PCI is that it's anywhere from faster (PCI Express X1) to much
much faster (PCI Express X16). In principle you can mix and match PCI
Express devices--put a PCI Express X1 device in an X16 slot for
example--and they'll work reliably at the lowest speed supported by both
the device and the slot, but I'll believe that when it has a track record.
Supposedly it's cheaper to implement than PCI-X, however I notice reading
the technical docs that Intel uses PCI-X internally in their PCI Express
chipsets, which kind of makes one wonder whether that is really so--in any
case the cost of motherboards at the low end these days is driven by the
labor to solder the parts on and put them in a box, so I doubt that there
are any real savings to be had there.

If you buy a new motherboard with a PCI Express slot, you _have_ to get a
new video board. If you want to use a new video board that only comes in
PCI Express (Intel was hoping this would happen--so far it hasn't) then you
_have_ to get a new motherboard, so its real benefit is that it helps sell
hardware. Also, since Intel kind of sprung it on everybody the AMD
chipmakers are playing catch up, which Intel hopes will sell more hardware
for them.
 
J. Clarke said:
SHRED wrote:




Google "PCI Express" and you'll find a lot of information. Basically Intel's
churning the market with a new slot whose only purpose is to sell
hardware--it doesn't do anything that older designs didn't do but Intel's
incorporated it in all their new chipsets and removed AGP and so the market
is kind of forced to follow along. Unless their plan backfires on them,
which I'm kind of hoping it will.

They're calling it "PCI Express" (there is also an older high performance
design called "PCI-X" that is used in servers and workstations--I'm sure
that "PCI Express" was chosen as a name so that it could easily be confused
with "PCI-X") but it is not PCI in anything but name--PCI Express boards
will not fit PCI slots and PCI boards will not fit PCI Express slots and
the signalling is completely different. The major benefit over AGP is that
there can be multiple PCI Express slots in a machine, the major benefit
over regular PCI is that it's anywhere from faster (PCI Express X1) to much
much faster (PCI Express X16). In principle you can mix and match PCI
Express devices--put a PCI Express X1 device in an X16 slot for
example--and they'll work reliably at the lowest speed supported by both
the device and the slot, but I'll believe that when it has a track record.
Supposedly it's cheaper to implement than PCI-X, however I notice reading
the technical docs that Intel uses PCI-X internally in their PCI Express
chipsets, which kind of makes one wonder whether that is really so--in any
case the cost of motherboards at the low end these days is driven by the
labor to solder the parts on and put them in a box, so I doubt that there
are any real savings to be had there.

If you buy a new motherboard with a PCI Express slot, you _have_ to get a
new video board. If you want to use a new video board that only comes in
PCI Express (Intel was hoping this would happen--so far it hasn't) then you
_have_ to get a new motherboard, so its real benefit is that it helps sell
hardware. Also, since Intel kind of sprung it on everybody the AMD
chipmakers are playing catch up, which Intel hopes will sell more hardware
for them.
Click to expand...

Awesome.
Thanks.


--

--SHRED--

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to
continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too
expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will
pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the
way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre."
~~Frank Zappa

http://costofwar.com/
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http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.rawstory.com/
http://www.buzzflash.com/
http://www.davidsirota.com/
http://www.dailyhowler.com/
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.americanprogress.org/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/
http://www.anotheramerica.org/fascism.htm
 
J. Clarke said:
Google "PCI Express" and you'll find a lot of information. Basically
Intel's
churning the market with a new slot whose only purpose is to sell
hardware
Click to expand...

INTEL? Correct me if I'm wrong, but all the SLI PCI-E motherboards I've seen
have been Socket 939. My GA-K8NXP-SLI holds an Athlon 64 4000+, and the only
other choice of motherboard at the time was an Asus AMD board. I guess this
is because AMD is the choice for gamers, and gamers are invariably the early
adopters of newish technology. At the moment, the only influence Intel is
having on the market revolves around unethical coercion of business
partners.
 
Alameda said:
INTEL? Correct me if I'm wrong, but all the SLI PCI-E motherboards I've
seen have been Socket 939. My GA-K8NXP-SLI holds an Athlon 64 4000+, and
the only other choice of motherboard at the time was an Asus AMD board. I
guess this is because AMD is the choice for gamers, and gamers are
invariably the early adopters of newish technology. At the moment, the
only influence Intel is having on the market revolves around unethical
coercion of business partners.
Click to expand...

You're wrong. Intel was shipping a number of PCI Express chipsets between 6
months and a year before the first PCI Express chipset for AMD shipped.
Further, the first PCI Express SLI machines were based on the Intel E7525
chipset and those boards are still available from Supermicro and Iwill.
For a long time the question was when if ever anybody was going to ship a
PCI Express chipset for AMD.

You may _think_ that your "only other choice" was an ASUS AMD board, but the
E7525 boards were available long before the first nforce4 shipped.

And in point of fact, if Intel had not put PCI Express on every single chip
in their new line and removed AGP then nobody would ever have heard of PCI
Express and there would _be_ no SLI.

You can deny that Intel has any influence in the market but the simple fact
is that with something like 90% of the microprocessor market, anything that
they do influences the market.
 
You can deny that Intel has any influence in the market but the simple
fact
is that with something like 90% of the microprocessor market, anything
that
they do influences the market.
Click to expand...

Not denying they influence the market...the crucial thing in the matter is
*how* they influence the market and hold onto that 90% share.
 
Alameda said:
Not denying they influence the market...the crucial thing in the matter is
*how* they influence the market and hold onto that 90% share.
Click to expand...

That's one crucial thing. Another is what they do with that influence. And
when they use it to gratuitously kill off a popular technology and replace
it with another, that's not good IMO.
 
SHRED said:
Okay I have been out of touch for a while with the latest video tech
stuff. PCIx16 slot?
I left off at the AGPx8 slot stage.
Would someone please explain(breifly) the latest slot technology
advantage
Click to expand...

Its faster
 
ofn01 said:
Its faster
Click to expand...

That's not really an advantage though for a video board. So far nobody has
demonstrated that any PCI Express board runs any faster than a board with
the same chipset running at AGP 4x.
 
Basically Intel's
churning the market with a new slot whose only purpose is to sell
hardware--it doesn't do anything that older designs didn't do ....
Click to expand...

The only advantage I've seen so far is that Valve recommends PCI Express
cards (over AGP) for reducing Half Life 2's hitching problem (pauses while
the game loads textures, etc). - a workaround to be sure, but PCI-E's extra
bandwidth seems to help, at least until Valve fixes the problem.
 
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