AGP for how much longer?

[ChrisR]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

I'm planning to hold onto my MSI neo2 A64 AGP motherboard for as long as
I can. Does anyone have a good idea of how much longer the major
players (ATI/Nvidia...) will be providing AGP video cards?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

In article <d7egpp$bjr$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>, ChrisR says...
> I'm planning to hold onto my MSI neo2 A64 AGP motherboard for as long as
> I can. Does anyone have a good idea of how much longer the major
> players (ATI/Nvidia...) will be providing AGP video cards?
>
ATI have just woken up to the fact that there's a massive consumer base
out there and have released their newest PCIe cards in AGP form.

Still able to buy AGP boards. TBH I wouldn't worry until Geforce 6800
Ultras/Radeon x850 can no longer keep up to the games being released
which'll give you a good few years.

--
Conor


"Be incomprehensible. If they can't understand, they can't disagree"

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

AGP will be around for at least a couple more years, due to all the legacy
computers out there.

--
DaveW



"ChrisR" <chrisr@es.co.nz> wrote in message
news:d7egpp$bjr$1@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> I'm planning to hold onto my MSI neo2 A64 AGP motherboard for as long as I
> can. Does anyone have a good idea of how much longer the major players
> (ATI/Nvidia...) will be providing AGP video cards?

 

[ChrisR]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

This is interesting

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTExNzUxNDYzNGZUVmRnd1Y3M01fMV8xMl9sLmpwZw==


ChrisR wrote:
> I'm planning to hold onto my MSI neo2 A64 AGP motherboard for as long as
> I can. Does anyone have a good idea of how much longer the major
> players (ATI/Nvidia...) will be providing AGP video cards?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

ChrisR <chrisr@es.co.nz> wrote:
> This is interesting
>
>
http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTExNzUxNDYzNGZUVmRnd1Y3M01fMV8xMl9sLmpwZw==

Absolutely. Investing in a new motherboard, CPU, graphics card and RAM
all at the same time is too much for a lot of people. The fact that I
can't easily upgrade just one component is what's holding me back.

Regards,
--
*Art

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

ChrisR <chrisr@es.co.nz> wrote in news:d7egpp$bjr$1@lust.ihug.co.nz:

> I'm planning to hold onto my MSI neo2 A64 AGP motherboard for as long as
> I can. Does anyone have a good idea of how much longer the major
> players (ATI/Nvidia...) will be providing AGP video cards?

As long as graphics card manufacturers are making a profit from AGP
cards...and here's where things go wrong for AGP.

Regardless of the technology between AGP and PCI-E, which at this moment is
neglegable, the difference between AGP4x, 8x and PCI-E can hardly be
noticed (if at all).

1. Retailers will push PCI-E, because they can make more profit, because
the consumer will need to buy more components for PCI-E. This in turn
means,
2. Retailers don't buy as many AGP cards from manufacturers, preferring
instead to push PCI-E cards, which means,
3. Display card manufactures produce less AGP cards, because demand is
dropping off.
4. AGP prices remain same, PCI-E prices come down.
5. Before we know it, and for no particular reason PCI-E has become
mainstream and AGP is dead in the water.

You'll be able to get new technology AGP cards for a couple of years (maybe
less), then you'll only be able to get new technology cards in PCI-E.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

AMD plans to migrate all desktop CPUs to the M2 socket by 2006, so you may
have to ditch your motherboard just to use a decent CPU next year...

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."


"ChrisR" <chrisr@es.co.nz> wrote in message
news:d7egpp$bjr$1@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> I'm planning to hold onto my MSI neo2 A64 AGP motherboard for as long as I
> can. Does anyone have a good idea of how much longer the major players
> (ATI/Nvidia...) will be providing AGP video cards?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Doug <pigdos@nospam.com> wrote:
> John, there are other chipset vendors out there aside from intel, what
> motivation do they have for going PCI express? If the tech isn't
> overwhelmingly superior to AGP why don't they (e.g. SiS, Nvidia, AMD)
> just continue to crank out AGP-based chipsets?

Money and demand.
Money, because serial interfaces are "simpler" in design than parallel
ones. A penny saved is a penny earned.
Demand, because customers want the newest, whether it's noticably better
or not. Remember the rush to get P4 CPUs when they came out, even
though a 1.6MHz P4 was slower than a 1.13MHz PIII-S? Or the rush to get
Prescott CPUs, even though they are outperformed by the Northwood at the
same clock speed?

In the case of PCIe, it does have some advantages, but not as many as
you would think, especially for motherboards with a limited number of
shared PCIe channels.

Regards,
--
*Art

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Doug wrote:

> John, there are other chipset vendors out there aside from intel, what
> motivation do they have for going PCI express? If the tech isn't
> overwhelmingly superior to AGP why don't they (e.g. SiS, Nvidia, AMD) just
> continue to crank out AGP-based chipsets?

They will for a while. But Nvidia's latest generation is PCI Express, so is
Via's, and I don't know of any announced plans for future AGP chipsets from
either. As a chipset vendor AMD doesn't really count--their penetration in
that market is almost negligible.

Intel has enough market penetration with their chipsets that they get to
define what the buyer expects, so unless it adds unreasonable cost like
RAMBUS everybody else pretty much has to follow suit.

There are some real benefits to PCI Express--the big one is that it has
enough bandwidth to allow Gigabit to run at full speed--but it is mainly
Intel hype that is driving it. It's supposed to be cheaper to implement
but the cost of implementing PCI/AGP is so low that that saving is mostly
in the eyes of the marketing department.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

 

[Gordon]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

"J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet@snet.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:d8viti05ij@news1.newsguy.com...

>
> There are some real benefits to PCI Express--the big one is that it has
> enough bandwidth to allow Gigabit to run at full speed
>

Are you referring to onboard gigabit Ethernet? If so, what's the maximum
speed for non PCI-E gigabit?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Gordon wrote:

>
> "J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet@snet.net.invalid> wrote in message
> news:d8viti05ij@news1.newsguy.com...
>
>>
>> There are some real benefits to PCI Express--the big one is that it has
>> enough bandwidth to allow Gigabit to run at full speed
>>
>
> Are you referring to onboard gigabit Ethernet? If so, what's the maximum
> speed for non PCI-E gigabit?

On standard PCI, typically gigabit can hit about 300 Mb/sec--with careful
tuning on a dedicated server it may hit 400. PCI-X lets it run at full
speed, but the boards that have that tend to be relatively expensive
workstation or server boards. PCI-E has more headroom than PCI-X and it's
not super expensive.

There are other approaches to getting good performance out of gigabit but
they require that it be designed into the chipset.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Strictly speaking the PCI bus should be able to handle gigabit ethernet
because it's capable of 133MBytes/sec, how much of it's theoretical
bandwidth is usable is another story I'm sure. Gigabit ethernet would peg
out at 128MBytes/sec. At that high a xfer rate I doubt it would even be
sustained.

--
there is no .sig
"Gordon" <mc@msnet.com> wrote in message
news:q_2dnYa5Rt6iyC7fRVn-rQ@comcast.com...
>
> "J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet@snet.net.invalid> wrote in message
> news:d8viti05ij@news1.newsguy.com...
>
>>
>> There are some real benefits to PCI Express--the big one is that it has
>> enough bandwidth to allow Gigabit to run at full speed
>>
>
> Are you referring to onboard gigabit Ethernet? If so, what's the maximum
> speed for non PCI-E gigabit?
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Doug wrote:

> Strictly speaking the PCI bus should be able to handle gigabit ethernet
> because it's capable of 133MBytes/sec, how much of it's theoretical
> bandwidth is usable is another story I'm sure. Gigabit ethernet would peg
> out at 128MBytes/sec. At that high a xfer rate I doubt it would even be
> sustained.

It can only manage that speed if the NIC is the _only_ device using the bus.
In principle transfers from RAM to RAM can go at full speed, in practice
they don't.

If there is disk I/O, which is usually the case, then each movement involves
two transfers on the PCI bus, one from disk to memory and the other from
memory to net or vice versa.

All that said, theory be damned in the real world you get 300 or so.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)