I think the reason why PCIE hasn't really taken off and the reason why people seem to want to stick with agp is for a number of reasons. for starters there appears to be no performance improvement over agp8x, on paper it looks better but in real world apps you just can't see any benefit.
Another thing is a lot of people may be happy with their current systems performance and have stable mobo's, but may want for graphics performance, having to go to a new mobo just causes a lot of hassles for the upgrader and especially since pcie mobo's are still 1st gen there are bound to be lots of issues, agp boards are relatively stable and hassle free these days. Also another annoying factor is power supplies, pcie mobos require all new power supplies which is another cost. So a simple graphics upgrade turns into a power supply and mobo upgrade too, and since the previous too are newer tech the prices are more expensive than exsisting mobo's and power supplies.
You've got more hassle, have to spend more money for pretty much zero benefit in performance. The only beneficial thing the PCIE has contributed is the ability to SLI i think, but if you're not interested in SLI, there isn't much point to PCIE for you. Also 4 gig of bandwidth vs 2 gig isn't substantial enough imo for developers to stop storing and caching stuff on video cards. We also have 512mb cards comming so the extra bandwidth PCIE provided won't probably be used in the future. Who knows. The only benefit I see that PCIE provides is for video encoding the full duplex bandwidth can make an impact, for games i just don't see it yet nor see anything in the future that's goona push it, especially when SLI systems are the top end and the cards are limited to 8x in that config.
Another thing is a lot of people may be happy with their current systems performance and have stable mobo's, but may want for graphics performance, having to go to a new mobo just causes a lot of hassles for the upgrader and especially since pcie mobo's are still 1st gen there are bound to be lots of issues, agp boards are relatively stable and hassle free these days. Also another annoying factor is power supplies, pcie mobos require all new power supplies which is another cost. So a simple graphics upgrade turns into a power supply and mobo upgrade too, and since the previous too are newer tech the prices are more expensive than exsisting mobo's and power supplies.
You've got more hassle, have to spend more money for pretty much zero benefit in performance. The only beneficial thing the PCIE has contributed is the ability to SLI i think, but if you're not interested in SLI, there isn't much point to PCIE for you. Also 4 gig of bandwidth vs 2 gig isn't substantial enough imo for developers to stop storing and caching stuff on video cards. We also have 512mb cards comming so the extra bandwidth PCIE provided won't probably be used in the future. Who knows. The only benefit I see that PCIE provides is for video encoding the full duplex bandwidth can make an impact, for games i just don't see it yet nor see anything in the future that's goona push it, especially when SLI systems are the top end and the cards are limited to 8x in that config.
