Higher Memory Bandwidth or AGP 8X

[BigBiggist]

Whats up guys, I have a question about two different motherboards. I am trying to decide between the Giga-byte GA-8IHXP, with the 850E chipset and the Asus P4S-8X with the SiS 648 chipset. I will be purchasing a Radeon 9700 Pro to go with this setup and I am sort of worried about the AGP 4X being a bottle neck in the future. I also am overclocking an Intel 2.4Ghz to 3.0 Ghz and want very good memory performance, hence the gigabyte mobo. Will I take a performance hit when it comes to gaming because of the AGP 4X? I know right now it doesnt matter, what about in the future? I also know that PC-1066 running at PC-1200 will kill Corsair XMS DDR 400 in performance. I have been trying to decide between the two for the past week or so. Since this is my first computer i am building i just want to be sure. So, what should I go for? The Asus P4S-8X with AGP 8X and Corsair XMS Series DDR 400 or the Giga-byte GA-8IHXP with AGP 4X and Kingston PC-1066? Both of these boards have similar features.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Crashman]

The Gigabyte board when paired with PC1066 RDRAM will positively stomp the SiS 648 in performance. AGP8x is not needed yet, and the memory performance gives the P4 a huge boost, especially when you overclock (the Kingston PC1066 has chips rated to 600MHz refresh rate, aka PC1200 speed).

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[bluzbrother]

I don't know about AGP8x not being needed yet...but the simple fact of the matter is... the AGP bus will always be a bottle neck to performance compared to the speed of the video cards internal memory bus.

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[Crashman]

That may be true in some ways, however if you look at cards with half the memory speed of the 9700, these cards were using just barely more than AGP2x bandwidth. The GTS for example ran better faster on the BX (AGP2x) chipset than the i815 (AGP4x). So I doubt that AGP8x adds anything more than a trivial amount of performance to the 9700, more than likely nothing at all.

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