AGP is not dead
- Thread starter neliz
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I've been real slow about this, admittedly, but can someone please explain the fascination with PCIe for the discrete enthusiast's market when the maximum bandwidth it supplies, although more than AGP x8, of course, is still several hundred percent below the onboard bandwidth supplied by the current crop of mid-to-high performance discrete 3d products made by all manufacturers, products that ship with 256-512mbs of onboard ram...?
I mean, isn't it terribly obvious that if "PCIe" was "the answer" for the performance end of the market then there'd be no need at all for 256mb PCIe products, let alone 512mb PCIe products?...
This all reminds me so very much of the frenzy surrounding the "superiority" of AGP over PCI a few years ago--when then, too, people were lauding AGP with seemingly no recongnition of the fact that the performance cards they were testing derived their performance from their local ram buses and not from AGP.
I see PCIe as a boon to the IGP markets which must rely on shared system memory architectures--that's easy. But I sure can't see it for the discrete performance markets. And, even if a grenade detonates in your hand you'd still probably have enough fingers left to count the number of other-than-3d-card PCIe peripherals currently manufactured in the mainstream, right?
So, it's surely no surprise to me to see that AGP mboards are still selling very well, indeed. I bought one back in January myself...
I mean, isn't it terribly obvious that if "PCIe" was "the answer" for the performance end of the market then there'd be no need at all for 256mb PCIe products, let alone 512mb PCIe products?...
This all reminds me so very much of the frenzy surrounding the "superiority" of AGP over PCI a few years ago--when then, too, people were lauding AGP with seemingly no recongnition of the fact that the performance cards they were testing derived their performance from their local ram buses and not from AGP.
I see PCIe as a boon to the IGP markets which must rely on shared system memory architectures--that's easy. But I sure can't see it for the discrete performance markets. And, even if a grenade detonates in your hand you'd still probably have enough fingers left to count the number of other-than-3d-card PCIe peripherals currently manufactured in the mainstream, right?
So, it's surely no surprise to me to see that AGP mboards are still selling very well, indeed. I bought one back in January myself...
Because PCIe is not about the bandwidth per se, nor has it ever been. It's about the transformation from a single bidirectional bus into two distinct unidirectional buses, which means that using the GPU for something besides rendering is feasible. It's a future-proofing issue, simple as that.WaltC said:I've been real slow about this, admittedly, but can someone please explain the fascination with PCIe for the discrete enthusiast's market when the maximum bandwidth it supplies, although more than AGP x8, of course, is still several hundred percent below the onboard bandwidth supplied by the current crop of mid-to-high performance discrete 3d products made by all manufacturers, products that ship with 256-512mbs of onboard ram...?
I mean, isn't it terribly obvious that if "PCIe" was "the answer" for the performance end of the market then there'd be no need at all for 256mb PCIe products, let alone 512mb PCIe products?...
This all reminds me so very much of the frenzy surrounding the "superiority" of AGP over PCI a few years ago--when then, too, people were lauding AGP with seemingly no recongnition of the fact that the performance cards they were testing derived their performance from their local ram buses and not from AGP.
I see PCIe as a boon to the IGP markets which must rely on shared system memory architectures--that's easy. But I sure can't see it for the discrete performance markets. And, even if a grenade detonates in your hand you'd still probably have enough fingers left to count the number of other-than-3d-card PCIe peripherals currently manufactured in the mainstream, right?
So, it's surely no surprise to me to see that AGP mboards are still selling very well, indeed. I bought one back in January myself...
Except, of course, everyone wants the public to think that PCIe is that much better then AGP. I find it ridiculous that the industry seemingly expected AGP to have died already. ATI originally didn't plan on making any AGP cards, they have since changed but now nvidia has taken their place, and I strongly doubt anything after this generation will support it, even though agp would probably still be capable of providing enough bandwidth for at least the generation after this one.The Baron said:
Loading textures on and off a PCIe card is faster, but this performance difference in real life does not come close to, say the price difference of a 6800gt AGP(€240) and PCIe(€305.)
What it does offer however, and SLI is a proof of that, bandwidth that can be used for transfering data to another card in the system.
AGP is upload hampered so a setup like SLI on an AGP/PCIe combo board would just never be feasible, it lacks the pure bandwidth for intensive data transfers OFF the AGP board.
AGP8x has allready been shown to be hardly faster than AGP4x and so PCIe16x is hardly faster than AGP4x.
What it does offer however, and SLI is a proof of that, bandwidth that can be used for transfering data to another card in the system.
AGP is upload hampered so a setup like SLI on an AGP/PCIe combo board would just never be feasible, it lacks the pure bandwidth for intensive data transfers OFF the AGP board.
AGP8x has allready been shown to be hardly faster than AGP4x and so PCIe16x is hardly faster than AGP4x.
I think it's safe to consider the performances of the two as equal. Very small differences can be caused by too many factors.
I too am a bit disgusted over the attempted forced-obsolesence by the graphics IHV's. I'm also a bit sickened by the insane amount of evangelism by the gamers out there. I have a NF2 mobo with a mobile AXP that'll run 2.4-2.5GHz. Obviously I don't plan on upgrading for a while yet. Good thing ATI & NV decided to throw out some AGP cards after all. Too bad the next gen doesn't seem to be going AGP.
There is just not a tangible difference between AGP and PCIe for the current gen, and probably not for the next gen either.
I too am a bit disgusted over the attempted forced-obsolesence by the graphics IHV's. I'm also a bit sickened by the insane amount of evangelism by the gamers out there. I have a NF2 mobo with a mobile AXP that'll run 2.4-2.5GHz. Obviously I don't plan on upgrading for a while yet. Good thing ATI & NV decided to throw out some AGP cards after all. Too bad the next gen doesn't seem to be going AGP.
There is just not a tangible difference between AGP and PCIe for the current gen, and probably not for the next gen either.
For the last time--there is no speed difference IN CURRENT APPS. Why? Because current apps only transfer data to the video card and never, ever from the video card. That's because AGP is totally incapable of doing both at the same time. PCIe is much better than AGP. Is it going to give you an extra 30 FPS in HL2? No. Does it make all sorts of different things possible, especially with regards to general-purpose computation on a GPU? Yeah. Will we see it in games? Eventually.
So it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with bandwidth. AGP8x has plenty of bandwidth, but it's all one-way. PCIe has more bandwidth and can be used to transfer data both ways. Considering the length of time PCIe has been around, no, it's not unreasonable at all to expect that the $600 cards aren't going to support AGP.
So it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with bandwidth. AGP8x has plenty of bandwidth, but it's all one-way. PCIe has more bandwidth and can be used to transfer data both ways. Considering the length of time PCIe has been around, no, it's not unreasonable at all to expect that the $600 cards aren't going to support AGP.
True but dual card solutions such as SLi are the only real advantage to that, and probably will be the only advantage for awhile yet.
Therefore it is reasonable to assume those who do not consider SLi to be worthwhile, such as myself, also have no incentive to moving to PCIe whatsoever.
Therefore it is reasonable to assume those who do not consider SLi to be worthwhile, such as myself, also have no incentive to moving to PCIe whatsoever.
Distributed computing is an exciting prospect for PCIe. Problem is we don't know when it's going to happen, or how effective GPU's will be for it. This probably isn't going to happen for quite a while.
The underlying truth though is that these cards are for games, and for games PCIe isn't all that thrilling. Though I have no problem with it being around as it is plainly a superior tech. I just like to have options for my fully capable PC, and not forced obsolesence. I'm pretty confident that that's why ATI and NV were/are so gun-ho about switching interfaces. A new interface adds some exciting mystery to new cards and is thus a great bulleted feature.... I don't think that ATI and NV would get caught up in interface hype. They should be fully aware of its advantages and whether their cards will benefit from it. I suppose ATI especially may just have totally missed the mark on how long adoption would take
The underlying truth though is that these cards are for games, and for games PCIe isn't all that thrilling. Though I have no problem with it being around as it is plainly a superior tech. I just like to have options for my fully capable PC, and not forced obsolesence. I'm pretty confident that that's why ATI and NV were/are so gun-ho about switching interfaces. A new interface adds some exciting mystery to new cards and is thus a great bulleted feature.... I don't think that ATI and NV would get caught up in interface hype. They should be fully aware of its advantages and whether their cards will benefit from it. I suppose ATI especially may just have totally missed the mark on how long adoption would take
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I'm still betting there will be AGP versions of both the 7800 & the R520 when they come out, I think they're going to do it for one more cycle.
Maintank said:
ISA was useful for some things even into '00 or so. Like modems. I hated the craptastic PCI Winmodem era. My 1995 USR V.90 Sportster ISA blows the crap out of a lot of modems that were around in '99 or so. V.92 is cool though. V.92 is actually pretty amazing. I've seen almost 10K/s on a 50K connection with non-text. It's amazing if you are still a modem user anyway. LOL. Not I!
The Baron said:
Ok, so you're saying that what counts is bi-direction regardless of bandwidth, and I can at least theoretically see your point about theoretical bus-device communication. However, it strikes me that even in this context bi-directional bandwidth is no less crucial than uni-directional bandwidth.
To that end, my point was that as the onboard local bandwidth of the current mid-high discrete 3d cards is several times higher than the maximum theoreticals of both uni and bi-directional buses (AGP and PCIe, respectively), the kind of communication afforded by the system bus, regardless of type, is nowhere near as distinctive in terms of 3d performance.
