Importance of AGP 8X?

[incinerate]

Hello
I'm looking to buy a new system and I was hoping to get the opinions of some of the experts on this board. I'm going p4 2.4B, with an ATI Radeon 9700pro. The Sis 648 chipset fulfills all my needs since it has agp 8x, but I hear it's buggy, and i dont fully trust non-intel chipsets. The i845pe chipset is rock solid and overclocks very well, but it doesn't support agp 8x. The granite bay has everything but it's way too expensive.

I guess my question is this: I know agp8x offers no support now, but down the road, would it be an issue? When games and apps are more texture intensive. I dont plan on upgrading for anotehr 3 years at least, so I would like some longevity. Do you guys think agp8x will ever make an impact, and which motherboard would you suggest? I'm also on a pretty tight budget. THanks for your time guys.

Alex

 

[vegandago]

when games and apps are utilizing AGP 8x you probably will be laughing at the radeon 9700pro.

"There is no dark or light side, only power and those too weak to seek it."

 

[gothitbycar]

It doesnt really make a difference in graphics cards, the only thing that matters is if you do CAD. But i think that only applies to the Quadro series, Wildcat, etc. The Radeon will be as happy in AGP 4x as it would be in 8x. I think the only time i ever saw a big peformance gain to 8x was the Nvidia Quardo 900 XGL. The new 980 XGl which is the same card and same speed as the 900 XGL but supports AGP 8x has about a 20% performance lead.

 

[Col_Kiwi]

The new 980 XGl which is the same card and same speed as the 900 XGL but supports AGP 8x has about a 20% performance lead.

So does the Ti4200-8x. It's not actually due to the AGP8x bus, though. On the "AGP8x version" cards from nVidia, they increased the video memory clock frequency, so that benchmarks would show the cards using AGP8x as performing better when in fact AGP8x is nothing but a marketing gimmick.



The point of AGP8x being useful in the future isn't valid either, unless you plan on keeping that motherboard for a very long time, and upgrading video cards in the future before you upgrade video cards.

It'll be quite a long time before AGP8x bandwidth is needed -- and once it is, the R300 will seem puny and not be able to keep up.

Use the analogy of past cards. If you could give an ATI Rage 128 or a Riva TNT an AGP4x bus, would it perform any better then the same card on AGP2x? No, because although the faster AGP bus can transfer more data to the card per second, the GPU can't calculate fast enough to take advantage of that.

It's the same thing with R300, NV18, NV28, and every other current card supporting AGP8x. The GPUs don't calculate fast enough, and the applications don't require sending enough information, to even quite fully use the AGP4x bus. So AGP8x is, as I have said before, <b>a marketing gimmick</b>.

And even the thought of getting an AGP8x motherboard so that you can keep it for years into the future when cards actually benefit from AGP8x is not much of a useful idea, because (IMHO) by then we're as likely to be using 3GIO and/or HyperTransport cards rather then AGP 3.0!


-Col.Kiwi

 

[gothitbycar]

Oh, so thats what they did. I guess I was just one of the others that fell into another large enteprises marketing tricks.
Here's another question, AGP allows the video card to share the systems resources (as in the memory) and PCI doesnt. What will PCI Express or 3GIO or whatever else do? Will they make a Graphics only port or does it already allow it to share system resources? As long as people want better they are always going to be putting more strain on their computer for prettier effects (pardon the use.) If a low end PCI Express card runs out of an alloted amount of memory (lets say 128mb) then its going to have to dump some memory or automatically lower detail, resolution, etc. Then comes the need for 512 mb cards and what not. If a seperate graphics port must be made for a graphics card then it will be no better than AGP. Their are going to be special features, soon it will venture astray from the original specifications and 10 years from that the same argument will be coming up.
I think I see why IBM or Sony or some company wants everything integrated on all one chipset is some giant network all sharing power. I forget the name for it but supposedly Playstation 3 will do that. That does look nice for some because someone can upgrade and everyone will benifit. Long would be the days of programs like 3d mark and other benchmarks seeing how all would be one. Thats just freaky, im with individualism.

 

[Col_Kiwi]

I guess I was just one of the others that fell into another large enteprises marketing tricks.

Yup. It's not your fault, though.


As for the bits about 3GIO, I don't know for sure, but it seems only logical to give it direct fetch tied into the northbridge and access to either it's own aperature (like AGP) or unmapped RAM pages, else there'd be exactly the problems you describe.

After all, what use is 6.4GBs of bandwidth when you have only a 128MB frame buffer and no aperature? Aperature is so important to AGP and such a large part of the reason it performs well that it seems only logical to me that they'll make it possible in 3GIO, after all 3GIO seems perfect for video cards.

Only time will tell.

-Col.Kiwi

 

[randy66]

look a Tom's graphic guide today , the 8x gf4 4200 did better than the 4x gf4 4200
better performance , at least w/NVIDIA cards .

 

[LtBlue14]

look a Tom's graphic guide today , the 8x gf4 4200 did better than the 4x gf4 4200
better performance , at least w/NVIDIA cards .

So does the Ti4200-8x. It's not actually due to the AGP8x bus, though. On the "AGP8x version" cards from nVidia, they increased the video memory clock frequency, so that benchmarks would show the cards using AGP8x as performing better when in fact AGP8x is nothing but a marketing gimmick.

that is all
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