graphics

[Destroyer^]

how long will agp be around for and still do well with games my pc specs in my sig and wondering if it would be worth to save up4 for a new mobo with amd 64 and a pci-e card or just buy a decent graphics card now for agp

[noah]

how long will agp be around for and still do well with games

i dont think there's really an answer to that question yet. i have a similar system and had a 9600 which i upgraded to a 6800 a few months ago, the difference is amazing, but i guess i'm now cpu limited.

given the money id go get a new m/b and cpu too! going agp or pci-e depends on how often you like to upgrade, theres no real difference now, but there may be in a year or two with the more power hungry cards and 16x speeds? ati and nvidia are both making native pci-e cards now tho. im happy with agp but then i dont think i'll change my setup for a year or so now, and then i'll do the lot and go pci-e.

in short pci-e is futureproof, but agp aint dead yet

[shiato storm]

i have just got a new mobo, an AND 64 cause i know its going to be fairly good for the future, and also its agp cause - despite the pci-e just coming out - i know agp will still be around for some time until pci-e is convincingly faster, less power hungry (if thats ever going to happen ), and so comprehensively better than agp there's really no contest. as it stands up at the top end its debatable whether pc-e is better or not...suffice to say lots of money is going into it so looks like it could take over in a year or two....i guess its upto the makers - if they still make money from the agp's they sell then they'll keep them, once interest starts to flag its going to be pci-e al the way.

its also worth noting that cards such as the 6800 and 6600 for agp are essentially pci-e cards with an agp interface (thanks to some cleaver trickery by nvidia or who-ever) so it could be we see future cards running as parallels agp and pci-e...

[Butcher]

PCI-E is more about upping the bandwidth before it becomes a serious bottleneck than because there's any great need currently, at least vs AGP. It also serves as a very nice upgrade to PCI, or will do once some high bandwidth cards (like scsi) start to arrive in pci-e flavour.