Bridges

[Xeon]

<A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20041005103646.html" target="_new"><font color=red>LoL</font color=red></A>.

Xeon

<font color=red>Post created with being a dickhead in mind.</font color=red>
<font color=white>For all emotional and slanderous statements contact THG for all law suits.</font color=white>

 

[cleeve]

Not surprised.

You're far better off bridging a faster bus down (PCIe to AGP) than bridging a slower bus with inherently less speed faster (AGP to PCIe).

not that the bridging make any tangible difference anyway. I'm surprised Nvidia and Ati made such a big deal out of it. 99% of the time the AGP 8x bus isn't even saturated.

Guess it's just more of the same marketing war baloney we all have to endure.



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[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Old news, <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=404196#404196" target="_new">and even back when it was brought up last</A>, by another person who thought this vindicated nV's bridge, it was OLD NEWS. :tongue:

As you will learn upon further investigation, bridging PCIe to work on AGP isn't as much of a deal as bridging AGP and saying it's an equivalent PCIe part. ATI always said they would if they had to to meet their AGP consumers' needs, which is just good business really.

Anywhyoo, nice stroll down memory lane.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[coylter]

OFN

Click <font color=blue><A HREF="http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/you.html" target="_new">HERE</A></font color=blue> if you real<b>l</b>y are an <font color=red>idiot</font color=red>.

 

[RichPLS]

The main debate about PCI Express at the moment is between Nvidia and ATI. ATI are implementing there cards with a true native PCI express connection. On the other hand Nvidia are implementing there current technology with an AGP Bridge, to convert PCI Express to AGP signals. This bridge chip is called the High Speed Interconnect (HSI) chip. Its a fully reversible chip will allows AGP GPU's to be run on PCI Express interfaces, and could be utilized to allow the use of PCI Express GPU's on an AGP bus.
As this chip is on the graphics card itself there is no wasted bandwidth on the motherboard, you still get the full bandwidth from the memory to the graphics card. To carry this bandwidth all the way through Nvidia has cranked up the speed of the AGP speed on the card itself to AGP16x. You now have no bandwidth loss. ATI claim the loss is involved with latencies when using a bridge chip during the translation. Now for a reality check. The step up from AGP 4x to 8x did very little for the graphics industry in its current state. 3D games today were not fully utilizing the available bandwidth in AGP 4x. The step up to AGP 8x only allowed for improvement in extreme circumstances anyway. This is not to say that this will always be the case. But my stance on this is by the time you need to the full 16 channels of PCI express Nvidia will be using native PCI Express cards in a whole new generation of graphics technology.

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[RichPLS]

The size of the of the PCI express slot depends on the amount of lanes it uses. Because of the nature of the data transfer the more lanes being used the more pins that have to be connected to the motherboard. This determines the size of the slot required. It also means that you can't insert a x1 PCI express card into a x16 PCI slot. Other sizes are available such as x8 and x12 PCI express slots, however it is unlikely that these sizes will turn up in mainstream computers. They will be resevered for special servers.

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[RichPLS]

A x1 PCI Express slot can provide a maximum of 25W of power, you will find that this is more than enough for a single PCI device. A x16 PCI Express slot will have support for 75W of power (bear in mind that these days high powered graphics cards often draw extra power direct from the PSU)

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