GPU Bandwidth?? Are we using AGP8 yet??

I'm not sure of the exact bandwidth usage by an 8800, but it's not more than what AGP 8x can handle. PCI-E's 16x link is more or less a formality right now - what really matters is the ability to SLi or CrossFire (neither of which can be done with an AGP technology).

Here's an article on PCI-express scaling which should provide some insight on how much bandwith is being used today for various applications. It seems that for a lot of tasks you actually do need as much bandwidth as possible. Have a look:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/27/pci_express_scal...

Thanks, That's what I was looking for. Wow, they used that bandwidth up quick.  

I loved AGP days

unfortunately there isn't actually an option for it but most cards would use somewhere about 12x pci e bandwidth, and with the crossfire or sli solution the extra 4x would be used for data between the card. simple?

Why didnt they just release AGP16x

Something like PCI-Express, a longer AGP port that could work with AGP 8x cards, 4x etc

AGP was a parallel bus system. Well, bus system isn´t the right term (it was a point to point connection). As with IDE and the FSB things go Serial because it allows to reach higher frequencies and simpler designs. I don´t doubt that AGP 16x was possible since intel manages its FSB architecture quite well too, but i think that the Mainboard manufacturers as well as the big video card companies had a word or two too.
In addition AGP was totally messed up compatibility wise. Just take a look at the different Card formats and voltage requirements.
PCIe is a much cleaner approach and i don´t doubt that it will stay for some time. The newer incarnations of it will just offer higher frequencies and support more power to the cards.

I'm pretty sure they released PCI-E not because of the lack of bandwidth but because the lack of power agp could supply, i think AGP could only supply 30W by itself, meaning most modern cards needed a molex connector and a pci-e power plug, if not just a molex atleast.

Not to mention that AGP = no SLi or CrossFire.

true, but not as big of a pushing point as power... sli & crossfire were really only marketing hype at the time of pci-es release, and not really practical. 2x 6800ultras, thats $2000 usd at the time ( i think)..lol

Wow, and I thought the 8800Ultra's were bad...

AGP was a parallel bus system. Well, bus system isn´t the right term (it was a point to point connection). As with IDE and the FSB things go Serial because it allows to reach higher frequencies and simpler designs. I don´t doubt that AGP 16x was possible since intel manages its FSB architecture quite well too, but i think that the Mainboard manufacturers as well as the big video card companies had a word or two too.
In addition AGP was totally messed up compatibility wise. Just take a look at the different Card formats and voltage requirements.
PCIe is a much cleaner approach and i don´t doubt that it will stay for some time. The newer incarnations of it will just offer higher frequencies and support more power to the cards.

Yeah, but thats something that makes me angry. Like DDR3, now we all gotta wait until companies lower their price and while time goes by, motherboard makers will stop doing DDR2 (or will do but much less) and customers get really affected.

AGP was nice, if you had AGP 2 generation (or v2 I think), you could ran up to AGP 4x. If you had Universal AGP, you could ran up to 8x and it was backwards compatible with 4x and 2x. So if you didnt need super powerull 8x card, you could just pick a 4x and still in good position.

Also, AGP 8x was in the market for a long time and while that time went by, videocard makers starting making super power hungry that required molex connector (same as PCI-Express, now they need PCi-ex power). Also, by that time, 99% of the people that had computers had AGP port and when PCi-Express came, things changed.

1) EVerybody had to immigrate to PCI-Ex
2) Cards were more expensive because "more bandwidth
3) No backwards compatibility, more expenses
4) Since the first day of PCi-Ex, AGP cards were getting more difficult to get meaning people/stores would make them more expensive.
5) Whoever had a super high-end AGP based PC was screwed, no more upgrades (nobody knew there were gonna be 7800GS and 7600GTs) for his PC (or at least not confirmed)

its clear why they(Nvidia) went pcie, alot of gaming consumers will now buy 2 video card instead of 1.

agp= 1 card, checkout price= 150.00

pcie=1 card "hey with 1 more card u can take the resolution up, shall i ring it up?" "sure, your the best mister sales man." checkout prices= 300.00

if i could get anyone to buy 2 of something that they only need 1 of i would do it too.

see the difference?

remember they are in it for the money 1st, then customer satisfaction. and will feed ya anything to get ya to buy what u think u need.

also, did ya wonder why ati is making dx10 agp cards? when TH has been saying agp is dead for 2 or 3 years now?

as of now processors are a big part of the gaming equation, but most if not all of todays games have a minimum req cpu of 2.0 ghz, but the video card min. req. have been steadly increasing. (games do not list a bandwidth min.req. i.e. agp, pcie). games are starting to go card intensive, soon the processor will not be needed as much for gaming. cpu's getting smaller less power hungry, video cards getting larger more power hungry.

until the majority of the gaming comunity start using a 64 bit operating system, the full potential of pcie will never be utilized.

I really don't see how you came up with that explanation. More money was definitely in the AGP market, since that was the standard for a vast majority of people. Even out of those who had PCI-E, only a few had SLi support.

The switch to PCI-E wasn't for the money. If they're making more money off PCI-E cards than they were off AGP, it's because of increasing prices (like $800 8800Ultra's), not SLi.

Since Sealboy already pointed out the reasoning behind the transition i have one question left.

How do you come to that conclusion?