Is it worth waiting for PCI-Express?

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In article <417297ae$0$47980$ed2e19e4@ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net>,
Cheddar says...
> I'm looking to build a new PC to play Half Life 2, my
> current system is ancient (in PC terms).
>
> I'm tempted to build right now but i'm undecided if I should
> wait for PCI-Express. Can anyone explain the benefits
> involved in waiting from a gaming point of view.
>
> I was looking at building around a AMD Athlon 64 3000
> Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) with 1GB of Ram and a Mobo
> using the NForce 3 250 chipset.
>
Pros.

Top end cards such as x800 seem to be readily available in PCIe


Cons.

You'll pay through the nose for it.

You'll be a guinea pig.

Currently the performance advantage isn't worth the extra cost.

A newer better chipset/motherboard will be coming out in the first 12
months of PCIe's introduction every other week. nForce 4 for example
has just been announced.

--
Conor

Opinions personal, facts suspect.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Cheddar wrote:

> I'm looking to build a new PC to play Half Life 2, my
> current system is ancient (in PC terms).
>
> I'm tempted to build right now but i'm undecided if I should
> wait for PCI-Express. Can anyone explain the benefits
> involved in waiting from a gaming point of view.
>
> I was looking at building around a AMD Athlon 64 3000
> Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) with 1GB of Ram and a Mobo
> using the NForce 3 250 chipset.

First of all, nVidia nForce 4 boards should be out in a couple of weeks,
supporting PCI-X.

Secondly, yes, it is worth waiting for if you want to be able to upgrade
your graphics card at some later date. The current generation of nVidia
6600, 6800 and ATi X800, X700, X600, X300 will be the last ones offered for
AGP. Some of the models don't even have an AGP model, yet, but they'll be
out soon. However, next year or afterward, when there are a new generation
of graphics cards and you want to upgrade, you'll be stuck if you have AGP.
If you really like your PC gaming experience, then you know that todays
graphics cards will seem slow in just 2 years time. New DX releases and
such need to be hardware supported, and games get more and more realistic
every new game that gets released.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Conor wrote:
> Currently the performance advantage isn't worth the extra
> cost.
>
> A newer better chipset/motherboard will be coming out in
> the first 12
> months of PCIe's introduction every other week. nForce 4
> for example
> has just been announced.

Thanks.

Lokks like a new PC within the next two weeks then, nice :-)

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I would rater go with Intel 925 mother board and ddr2 533 MHz. Ati already
has PCI Ex. card (CA $275)

Boba Vancouver BC


"Cheddar" <whatno@email.com> wrote in message
news:417297ae$0$47980$ed2e19e4@ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net...
> I'm looking to build a new PC to play Half Life 2, my current system is
> ancient (in PC terms).
>
> I'm tempted to build right now but i'm undecided if I should wait for
> PCI-Express. Can anyone explain the benefits involved in waiting from a
> gaming point of view.
>
> I was looking at building around a AMD Athlon 64 3000 Winchester 90nm
> (Socket 939) with 1GB of Ram and a Mobo using the NForce 3 250 chipset.
>
> Thanks.
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 17:02:37 +0100, "Cheddar"
<whatno@email.com> wrote:

>I'm looking to build a new PC to play Half Life 2, my
>current system is ancient (in PC terms).
>
>I'm tempted to build right now but i'm undecided if I should
>wait for PCI-Express. Can anyone explain the benefits
>involved in waiting from a gaming point of view.
>
>I was looking at building around a AMD Athlon 64 3000
>Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) with 1GB of Ram and a Mobo
>using the NForce 3 250 chipset.
>
>Thanks.
>


From a gaming point of view it doesn't matter.
AGP is sufficent for all the performance of current-gen
video cards. PCI Express will gain almost nothing for
gaming, BUT inevitably a year or two from now if you wanted
to replace the video card again (as gamers often do) you'd
want PCI-Express platform for the new card... but then you
might want whole new system at that point too, it's not like
the video card would be the only thing to replace for best
performance 2 years later. Only you can forecast the
replacement intervals.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In article <6m86n09k30uh13qjalkneapl2a8nkp4o37@4ax.com>,
spam@spam.com says...
> From a gaming point of view it doesn't matter.
> AGP is sufficent for all the performance of current-gen
> video cards. PCI Express will gain almost nothing for
> gaming, BUT inevitably a year or two from now if you wanted
> to replace the video card again (as gamers often do) you'd
> want PCI-Express platform for the new card... but then you
> might want whole new system at that point too, it's not like
> the video card would be the only thing to replace for best
> performance 2 years later. Only you can forecast the
> replacement intervals.

I'm thinking that AGP video cards will still be readily
available 3-4 years from now.

I'm a gamer and I only upgrade my video card every 2
years, usually buying the fastest card for <$250. Seems
to be the sweet spot between paying through the nose and
still getting good performance. The motherboard/CPU/RAM
gets upgraded on the odd years and that's usually where
I spend a bit more (usually $500-$800 for all 3
components).

I went with AGP this last time around, earliest I would
consider buying PCIe is next spring.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:59:41 -0400, Toshi1873
<toshi1873@nowhere.com> wrote:

>In article <6m86n09k30uh13qjalkneapl2a8nkp4o37@4ax.com>,
>spam@spam.com says...
>> From a gaming point of view it doesn't matter.
>> AGP is sufficent for all the performance of current-gen
>> video cards. PCI Express will gain almost nothing for
>> gaming, BUT inevitably a year or two from now if you wanted
>> to replace the video card again (as gamers often do) you'd
>> want PCI-Express platform for the new card... but then you
>> might want whole new system at that point too, it's not like
>> the video card would be the only thing to replace for best
>> performance 2 years later. Only you can forecast the
>> replacement intervals.
>
>I'm thinking that AGP video cards will still be readily
>available 3-4 years from now.


Yes, but probably not much if any faster models, and even if
there were any then the platform running that video card
would bottleneck it, there will be an upper limit to how
fast a CPU will be in a box that has an AGP slot. How much
would someone spend for a next-gen high performance video
card to use it on a (then) slower system?

>
>I'm a gamer and I only upgrade my video card every 2
>years, usually buying the fastest card for <$250. Seems
>to be the sweet spot between paying through the nose and
>still getting good performance. The motherboard/CPU/RAM
>gets upgraded on the odd years and that's usually where
>I spend a bit more (usually $500-$800 for all 3
>components).
>
>I went with AGP this last time around, earliest I would
>consider buying PCIe is next spring.

That may be a good plan, by then there may be revision "2"
of nForce4 boards available and a few bios release/patches
for it.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

kony wrote:

>>I'm thinking that AGP video cards will still be readily
>>available 3-4 years from now.
>
>
> Yes, but probably not much if any faster models, and even if
> there were any then the platform running that video card
> would bottleneck it, there will be an upper limit to how
> fast a CPU will be in a box that has an AGP slot. How much
> would someone spend for a next-gen high performance video
> card to use it on a (then) slower system?

Both nVidia and ATi have announced that the current chips: 6600, 6800, X600,
X700, X800, and all derivatives of such will be the last generation of
graphics processors released for AGP. All future major GPU's will be
available only for PCI-X 16.

>>I went with AGP this last time around, earliest I would
>>consider buying PCIe is next spring.

That may be good advice: wait for the next PCI-X chipsets and all the bugs
will be worked out. However, new features like dual core CPU support may
introduce new bugs.

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Toshi1873:

> I'm thinking that AGP video cards will still be readily
> available 3-4 years from now.

Only used. I predicted months ago that AGP will die as quickly as VLB and
by all indications, I am correct. All the new cards coming out are PCI-E
and almost all the new motherboards support PCI-E. Sure, AGP will hang
around for another 6-12 months but not much more.


--
Mac Cool

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In article <Xns958A730C4E467MacCool@130.133.1.4>, Mac@
2cool.com says...
> Toshi1873:
>
> > I'm thinking that AGP video cards will still be readily
> > available 3-4 years from now.
>
> Only used. I predicted months ago that AGP will die as quickly as VLB and
> by all indications, I am correct. All the new cards coming out are PCI-E
> and almost all the new motherboards support PCI-E. Sure, AGP will hang
> around for another 6-12 months but not much more.

Which will suit me just fine because I tend to buy video
cards about 24 months behind bleeding edge. So today's
$600 cards will be down around $100-$200 by then.