PCI Express Worth It?

  • Thread starter Thread starter RobB
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RobB

I would like to buy an ADM Athlon 68 3800+ based system and was wondering if
it's worth waiting for the 939 PCI-Express motherboards. The store that I
plan to get a custom system built from doesn't expect to have any till
possibly the end of January. From my limited understanding, there's not
much performance advantage over and AGP board and then there is always the
possibility of problems with newly released product. To me it's more of a
case of future proofing when upgrading the vid card later on.



Should I buy now or wait, cause I'm anxious to upgrade.
 
I would like to buy an ADM Athlon 68 3800+ based system and was wondering if
it's worth waiting for the 939 PCI-Express motherboards. The store that I
plan to get a custom system built from doesn't expect to have any till
possibly the end of January. From my limited understanding, there's not
much performance advantage over and AGP board and then there is always the
possibility of problems with newly released product. To me it's more of a
case of future proofing when upgrading the vid card later on.

Should I buy now or wait, cause I'm anxious to upgrade.
Click to expand...

That's up to you, but I wouldn't worry about support for regular PCI for
at least several years. Look how long ISA stayed around after PCI came
out. Don't rememvber the year, but 386 boards had PCI, and the first
socket A board I bought did too.:-) Not sure how long AGP will last, but I
would suspect that it will have support for quite some time. So I wouldn't
ket the PCI-E be the reason to not upgrade.
 
Wes Newell said:
That's up to you, but I wouldn't worry about support for regular PCI for
at least several years. Look how long ISA stayed around after PCI came
out. Don't rememvber the year, but 386 boards had PCI, and the first
socket A board I bought did too.:-) Not sure how long AGP will last, but I
would suspect that it will have support for quite some time. So I wouldn't
ket the PCI-E be the reason to not upgrade.
Click to expand...

I'm waiting for a PCI-E motherboard for the 939 socket, too. The way things
are going - video cards are advancing much faster than CPUs - you will
probably have to buy a new card before it's time to upgrade your motherboard
again. This is why PCI-E is a better upgrade path. Nvidia is already
reducing their selection of AGP cards - its limited to the 6800 series or a
6600 GT. There's no guarantee that they'll release the Geforce 7 series
with any AGP cards, except maybe the low end cards for people with older
hardware who upgrade less often. I'm getting so impaitent that I'm thinking
about going with an Intel setup. They have a .90 nm processor, but it
doesn't have the integrated FSB.
 
Rudy said:
I'm waiting for a PCI-E motherboard for the 939 socket, too. The way things
are going - video cards are advancing much faster than CPUs - you will
probably have to buy a new card before it's time to upgrade your motherboard
again. This is why PCI-E is a better upgrade path. Nvidia is already
reducing their selection of AGP cards - its limited to the 6800 series or a
6600 GT. There's no guarantee that they'll release the Geforce 7 series
with any AGP cards, except maybe the low end cards for people with older
hardware who upgrade less often.
Click to expand...

Nvidia will release whatever there is a demand for. Lots of demand for
AGP video cards, therefore Nvidia will release AGP video cards. SLI is
not that important to most people.
I'm getting so impaitent that I'm thinking
about going with an Intel setup. They have a .90 nm processor, but it
doesn't have the integrated FSB.
Click to expand...

Still won't get SLI with an Intel setup until Nvidia releases a chipset
for that.

Yousuf Khan
 
I would like to buy an ADM Athlon 68 3800+ based system and was wondering if
it's worth waiting for the 939 PCI-Express motherboards. The store that I
plan to get a custom system built from doesn't expect to have any till
possibly the end of January. From my limited understanding, there's not
much performance advantage over and AGP board and then there is always the
possibility of problems with newly released product. To me it's more of a
case of future proofing when upgrading the vid card later on.



Should I buy now or wait, cause I'm anxious to upgrade.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't buy an Nforce4 board before March or April to give them time to
get the bugs out (for example the hypertransport bus is limited to 800MHz
on the Nforce 4 at the moment because of a bug, the Nforce3-250 operates
at 1GHz). With the current generation of graphics cards there isn't any
performance difference between PCI Express and AGP unless you get an SLI
system which is immensely expensive. Even with the next generation of
graphics cards it's unlikely that AGP will be a bottleneck. Likewise with
SATA-II vs SATA-I. For desktop use there won't be any performance
difference between SATA-I and II systems. For file servers SATA-II will
offer a significant performance gain because of native command queuing
(NCQ) but I don't see how NCQ helps desktop systems at all.
 
Wes Newell said:
That's up to you, but I wouldn't worry about support for regular PCI for
at least several years. Look how long ISA stayed around after PCI came
out. Don't rememvber the year, but 386 boards had PCI, and the first
socket A board I bought did too.:-) Not sure how long AGP will last, but I
would suspect that it will have support for quite some time. So I wouldn't
ket the PCI-E be the reason to not upgrade.
Click to expand...

nvidia announced the FX6200 will only be PCI-E

so maybe AGP will be supported but not at the high end of the market Geforce
6 series etc.

im not an ATI man so i wouldnt know about them
 
Nvidia will release whatever there is a demand for. Lots of demand for AGP
video cards, therefore Nvidia will release AGP video cards. SLI is not
that important to most people.
Click to expand...

I think a lot of people demanded a 6600 AGP. That would have been a kickass
bargain. Nvidia (and ATI) make most of thier money in the mid to low end
market, so I don't see why they didn't release one of these. I think
they're trying to steer the market away from AGP as quickly as possible so
they will only have to worry about one format instead of two. It saves them
money in the long run.
Still won't get SLI with an Intel setup until Nvidia releases a chipset
for that.
Click to expand...

I don't have a house to mortgage in order to afford a SLI setup, so it's not
relevant to me. The important thing to remember is that this won't be the
same as switching from PCI to AGP. The PCI slots still exist, so if I
wanted to, I could install my Voodoo Banshee or even my S3 Virge if I needed
an extra card. Once AGP is gone, it's gone forever. Your $200 card is now
a paperweight, unless you hold on to your old motherboards.
 
Rudy said:
I think a lot of people demanded a 6600 AGP. That would have been a kickass
bargain. Nvidia (and ATI) make most of thier money in the mid to low end
market, so I don't see why they didn't release one of these. I think
they're trying to steer the market away from AGP as quickly as possible so
they will only have to worry about one format instead of two. It saves them
money in the long run.
Click to expand...

You'll likely see something similar to the 6600 in AGP soon enough, if
not that exact model, then likely its successor. They may be trying to
seed the demand for PCI Express video cards right now, certainly. But
the only way to do that is with low-end video offerings, not high or
mid-high end offerings like the 6600.
I don't have a house to mortgage in order to afford a SLI setup, so it's not
relevant to me.
Click to expand...

Then why would you want a PCIe, if not for SLI? PCIe offers absolutely
no performance advantages over AGP in single-video card systems; in fact
they offer a net loss of performance (though very slight, at around 1%).
The only really big advantage comes when used in SLI mode.
The important thing to remember is that this won't be the
same as switching from PCI to AGP. The PCI slots still exist, so if I
wanted to, I could install my Voodoo Banshee or even my S3 Virge if I needed
an extra card. Once AGP is gone, it's gone forever. Your $200 card is now
a paperweight, unless you hold on to your old motherboards.
Click to expand...

AGP won't be gone forever, it's only in Intel motherboards where they
got rid of the AGP slots in favour of PCIe. But there is nothing
preventing AGP from residing alongside PCIe, just as there is nothing
preventing PCI from residing alongside PCIe. Intel probably got rid of
it for space issues on their motherboards, but more probably to make
people move towards PCIe cards. It's likely that you'll see AGP show up
in PCIe motherboards for AMD platforms, because AMD platforms aren't
"designed by politicians" quite as much as Intel systems are.

I can seriously envision seeing some motherboard makers making two or
more different versions of motherboards using the same chipsets. One
mobo might be their "value" board, which would include AGP slot for
backwards compatibility, while the "performance" board will contain two
x8 or x16 PCIe slots for SLI-gaming but no AGP.

Yousuf Khan
 
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