OT (slighlty) How much longer will AGP be around?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rockin Ronnie
  • Start date Start date
Rockin Ronnie said:
I want to build a system around an Athlon 64 3500+ but at the moment I do
not see any PCIe boards available. Should I wait? This article tells me
that things are ramping up for PCIe though not as quickly as first
anticipated:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20041007A7050.html
Click to expand...

Depends on what you mean by "around".

Still found in PC's - 10+ years probably.

Cards and boards still available to buy < 3years?

Still sold by major PC oems like Dell? < 2 years, perhaps < 1 year.

All my opinion, nothing more.

Chip
 
Difficult to estimate, a year maybe? Two at most. At that time I doubt that
any new mobo will have AGP-bus. There's imo three things you can do.
1) Buy the most powerful agp card, so it will carry you well over the
transition, upgrade to PCIe once it has become "industry standard".
2) Buy an average/cheap agp card, and upgrade to PCIe, once it becomes
better available.
3) Take a time out, wait for PCIe to become better available, buy a DIRT
CHEAP high performance agp card and skip the first generation PCIe cards
completely.

This of course depends on how much money you're planning on using.
 
I want to build a system around an Athlon 64 3500+ but at the moment I
do not see any PCIe boards available. Should I wait? This article tells
me that things are ramping up for PCIe though not as quickly as first
anticipated:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20041007A7050.html
Click to expand...

Wait for what, there is hardly any performance benefit between the PCI
Express and AGP versions of the current generation of GPU's.

You can't compare AGP / PCIe because of the different baselines. There
is nothing in the market yet that can saturate the old x4 AGP channel.

The industry would love it if it could make each of us simultaneously
upgrade both our MOBO's and VID, it's a con.
Ron
Click to expand...

BoroLad
 
Wait for what, there is hardly any performance benefit between the PCI
Express and AGP versions of the current generation of GPU's.
Click to expand...

Presumably wait for an AMD-64 motherboard with PCI Express.
You can't compare AGP / PCIe because of the different baselines. There
is nothing in the market yet that can saturate the old x4 AGP channel.

The industry would love it if it could make each of us simultaneously
upgrade both our MOBO's and VID, it's a con.
Click to expand...

Yup. Or at least a scheme.
 
Rockin said:
I want to build a system around an Athlon 64 3500+ but at the moment I
do not see any PCIe boards available. Should I wait? This article tells
me that things are ramping up for PCIe though not as quickly as first
anticipated:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20041007A7050.html

Ron
Click to expand...

AGP will be around for a long time, maybe not in new boards after a
couple years, but untill pci-express goes full bore mainstream I'd expect
probably 4 years or so before you see total integration.

considering all the power thats been put on the market the last couple
years, I'd only expect the richest fools around to want bleeding edge,
because i dont think pci-express is going to be at its full potential for
a long long time (16 pipelines), and no one wants to blow cash on a new
system for the sake of a minor improvement. My a7n8x-dlx xp3200+ and ATI
9800 pro will do me for many years to come.
 
J. Clarke said:
Presumably wait for an AMD-64 motherboard with PCI Express.


Yup. Or at least a scheme.
Click to expand...

As we have discussed many times before its long overdue as a replacement for
the aging (and rather crap) PCI bus. But as an AGP replacement? Largely a
waste of time.

The point that people don't seem to grasp is that graphics memory is (often)
256 bits wide, 2.0ns (or less) for a reason. You really don't want system
memory (64bit, 5ns) being accessed at all. Its 10 times slower than on
board memory. Forget how fast the bus is!

Chip
 
Rockin Ronnie said:
I want to build a system around an Athlon 64 3500+ but at the moment I
do not see any PCIe boards available. Should I wait? This article tells
me that things are ramping up for PCIe though not as quickly as first
anticipated:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20041007A7050.html

Ron
Click to expand...


It concerns me that both ATI and nVidia seem to want to come out with PCI
Express only video cards, but ultimately they have to cater to the market.
Right now, since PCI Express is new, the vast majority of users have AGP. I
don't think anyone can realistically kill off AGP completely for another 2
to 3 years. I for one will not be bullied prematurely into new technology
because some company (or even elitist) seems to think that previous
technology is dead the moment something new comes out. Besides, if the lead
programmer for Doom 3 says that there is no notable performance difference
in the game on a PCI Express video card compared to the same tier AGP card,
I'm left with the impression that AGP is still good and strong. I have no
doubt that PCI Express will have it's place in the mainstream, but that's at
least a couple of years away. By then, I'm sure it will have matured
somewhat too.
 
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