PCI-Express and DDR2 are useless for the forseeable future >> Review

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sham B
  • Start date Start date
S

Sham B

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjMwLDE

'We have yet to find any application that can show real gaming benefits of PCI-Express and we are
thinking that DOOM3 and Half Life 2 will not really take advantage of it either'

'DDR2 is an obvious disappointment to the enthusiast. It is crippled by slow latencies compared to
our beloved low latency DDR400 '

'We are seeing no advantages to currently using PCI-Express video cards. We are currently seeing no
advantage to using DDR2 at 533MHz. Quite frankly we are seeing no real advantages at all'.


IMO, Its all a big fat Marketing Ploy to get us to upgrade early :/

S
 
Aint that all PC componates ?

We don't care we will upgrade anyway, it will be faster but by not
much like usual, but the old tech wont be selling so we will buy the
new tech, just is the way it is.

Oh well.
 
Sham said:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjMwLDE

'We have yet to find any application that can show real gaming benefits of PCI-Express and we are
thinking that DOOM3 and Half Life 2 will not really take advantage of it either'
Click to expand...

Not surprising, as they where mostly developed on the ATI 9700 and GF4
series of cards.
'DDR2 is an obvious disappointment to the enthusiast. It is crippled by slow latencies compared to
our beloved low latency DDR400 '

'We are seeing no advantages to currently using PCI-Express video cards. We are currently seeing no
advantage to using DDR2 at 533MHz. Quite frankly we are seeing no real advantages at all'.
Click to expand...

Well guess what? that's true, unless a developer was able to go into the
future a few years back and predict what would be a standard today and
program for it :\
IMO, Its all a big fat Marketing Ploy to get us to upgrade early :/
Click to expand...

Well it's a good thing we both know there isn't anything decent out
there yet to run on them.
S
Click to expand...

Shall all be worth it when the programmers have a chance to play with
the new hardware and to take advantage of new features available.

Marketing, well guess they have to get the new hardware out there some
how to the masses.

Minotaur (8*
 
Aff, but you need the guinea pigs to pay a fortune for the bleeding-edge
stuff for the prices to eventually come down. :-)

At least PCIe reduces board traces and simplifies design, eventually cutting
mfg. costs.
 
Scott Backular said:
Aint that all PC componates ?

We don't care we will upgrade anyway, it will be faster but by not
much like usual, but the old tech wont be selling so we will buy the
new tech, just is the way it is.

Oh well.
Click to expand...


You make some good points, but I think anyone who wants to buy PCI Express
motherboards and cards as well as DDR-2 memory when they become available
in hopes of some immediate gain will be disappointed. Of course, as you
mention, we all do eventually jump on the new tech, but I know that I'm
totally set with my systems until late 2005 or early 2006. By then, the
landscape should be pretty sweet and all of this new tech coming out will
have matured somewhat too.
 
Iam upgrading soon to a Mobile Barton 2500 runing at 2.6,2.7ghz and a
Epox EP-8RDA3+ and thats IT untill Xp release an 64 Bit OS and people
start releaseing 64bit apps,games ect, untillthen ill keep my 32bit
system :)
 
I cant help but think that this is a much larger than normal con...

the rub is that this stuff will cost prime cash early on (whilst the old tech will shoot down in
price), and the prices dont settle until about 18 months in, when the new technology finally starts
to have applications and show advantages.... by which time the stuff that will appear in the next
year will be useless - *you will never be able to use the first wave of this technology*
The early adopters are going to be fleeced, and wont even have bragging rights to fall back on with
this crap!

Also, this isnt an evolution (like, say from R300 to R350), but a total upgrade in the core system
in readiness for future technology that hasnt arrived yet, and hardware that will probably not be
cutting edge enough when the applications for it finally do arrive. I;m not sure what the uptake
will be on that basis (!), so acceptance (and therefore custom software that takes advantage) may be
thin on the ground for a long time to come IMO.

Back on the ranch, for video gamers, it is generally accepted that AGPx8 does not require replacing
for current game requirements, and the additional bandwidth of PC express will not be usefull in any
case until mobo memory is running at comparable speeds to video RAM (it is nowhere near and wont be
for *years*). The only killer app the designers have come up with at the moment is video editing,
which is cool for desktop film publishing, but hardly mainstream, and certainly not the core use for
users of this forum (except those that go in for porn).

Sorry for being so negative, but this stuff just downright annoys me. There will be less tech-savvy
kids out there saving real hard earned cash for this kit, and they will get nothing back from it.
The manufacturors should at least put out kit that delivers *some* of the promise...


S
 
First said:
Aff, but you need the guinea pigs to pay a fortune for the bleeding-edge
stuff for the prices to eventually come down. :-)

At least PCIe reduces board traces and simplifies design, eventually
cutting mfg. costs.
Click to expand...

Given the prices of boards today I doubt very much that there's going to be
any significant reduction in manufacturing costs. Half a cent's worth of
copper maybe. This "cutting manufacturing costs" is another part of the
sales pitch.
 
Reducing the number of traces does simplify PCB design, perhaps leading
toward fewer board layers and such. As a more distant example, what do you
think is the cost difference between 128-bit and 256-bit memory interfaces?
 
Mobile Barton, as in Athlon-M, with lower default voltages, stock FSB, and
open multipliers? :-)
 
First said:
Reducing the number of traces does simplify PCB design, perhaps leading
toward fewer board layers and such.
Click to expand...

You can get new motherboards today for $30, retail. How much cheaper will
PCI Express allow them to be sold?
As a more distant example, what do you
think is the cost difference between 128-bit and 256-bit memory
interfaces?
Click to expand...

In what time frame? At some point in time it will be a couple of cents.
 
J. Clarke said:
You can get new motherboards today for $30, retail. How much cheaper will
PCI Express allow them to be sold?
Click to expand...

I should know this, for I'm running on a $50 Elitegroup board...

Remember, my original post said "cutting mfg. costs". PCIe is beneficial for
the manufacturer, but indifferent to the end-user. Board mfrs tend to be
pretty stringent on cost control, so a difference of 10 cents is actually
important, *particularly* when selling low-margin, $30 motherboards.

Note, all this applies to ATi cards. nVidia cards use a PCIe bridge. A few
manufacturers got quite ticked for having to pay an extra $5 for the bridge
chip.
In what time frame? At some point in time it will be a couple of cents.
Click to expand...

Right now the retail price difference is more like $30. Even if the
manufacturing cost difference is $10, that's still pretty significant.
 
First said:
I should know this, for I'm running on a $50 Elitegroup board...

Remember, my original post said "cutting mfg. costs". PCIe is beneficial
for the manufacturer, but indifferent to the end-user. Board mfrs tend to
be pretty stringent on cost control, so a difference of 10 cents is
actually important, *particularly* when selling low-margin, $30
motherboards.
Click to expand...

But will there be ten cents difference? Will the mass of copper saved be
greater than the mass of ten US pennies? I don't think so--that's actually
quite a lot of copper. Will the PCI Express components be cheaper?
Note, all this applies to ATi cards. nVidia cards use a PCIe bridge. A few
manufacturers got quite ticked for having to pay an extra $5 for the
bridge chip.


Right now the retail price difference is more like $30. Even if the
manufacturing cost difference is $10, that's still pretty significant.
Click to expand...

If you're talking video boards, I suspect that that's a marketing decision
and the actual manufacturing cost difference is small. Remember the price
difference between the Radeon 9500 and the 9700, even though they were
build on the same board with the same chip and one could be easily modded
into the other?
 
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