AGP - Is it gonna die soon?

[Toge]

Not when cpu's speed up!

are you suggesting I overclock?

[Toge]

the question that I'm ask really now is:

should I upgrade my mobo with my curent rig in order to take PCI-E cards? or should i just buy a 6600GT AGP card now and save my money until later?

[Kef9]

the question that I'm ask really now is:

should I upgrade my mobo with my curent rig in order to take PCI-E cards? or should i just buy a 6600GT AGP card now and save my money until later?

Mate if I was you I would get the AGP card. Best off to upgrade cpu/mobo/gpu together so you dont get cpu limited.

I reckon your northwood will work very nicely with a 6600gt. I also reckon that AGP will be around for at least the next 2 generations and untill demand is non existant. Its not a big problem for ATi and nVidia anyway cos all they have to do is slap a bridge on the back of the pci-e cards - Big deal.

[sr4470]

Well the fastest card on AGP is the X850XTPE..and it doesnt appear there will be anything better for AGP. Whereas with PCI-E, theres the 7800GT\GTX and R520\580\G70 in the pipeline.

[Jonny M]

Well the fastest card on AGP is the X850XTPE..and it doesnt appear there will be anything better for AGP. Whereas with PCI-E, theres the 7800GT\GTX and R520\580\G70 in the pipeline.

Which there will be no point upgrading to until the CPU is upgraded.

[Toge]

Cheers Kef will be buying a 6600GT. My case will be baking hot though

[Kef9]

Well the fastest card on AGP is the X850XTPE..and it doesnt appear there will be anything better for AGP. Whereas with PCI-E, theres the 7800GT\GTX and R520\580\G70 in the pipeline.

These will most defo come out in AGP form. Especially when there is potential money to be made from existing AGP users who wont be swapping for a while yet.

[Kef9]

won't graphics cards in the future be limited by my CPU?

yep. Current high end graphics cards will be limited by your cpu. Thats why a 6600gt is a very nice choice.

Your case should should be fine with one of those in.

[sr4470]

He could always overclock the northwood

[cm_uk]

PCI-E was supposed to replace both AGP and PCI though

what are you talking about mate so you put pci cards for example freeview tv cards into your PCI-E and plug the graphics card in where the usb

[mike_w]

what are you talking about mate so you put pci cards for example freeview tv cards into your PCI-E and plug the graphics card in where the usb

What are you talking about? PCI-Express is supposed to replace PCI and AGP. There are different speed lanes - I think there's 16x for graphics cards, and 1x for other slots, which is where you put the other cards. So you'd plug the Freeview TV card into a PCI-Express 1x (or whatever speed), and the graphics card into the faster slot.

[cm_uk]

fair point, i haven't seen that is it all backward compatable then?

[krazy_olie]

I don't think you can put PCI in to PCI-E can you?

[arthurleung]

I don't think you can put PCI in to PCI-E can you?

You can't, unless there is someone producing a converter that use the Intel PCI-X/PCIe Bridge (which will probably only allow low profile cards )

[sr4470]

I don't think you can put PCI in to PCI-E can you?

Nope. This is why PCI-E mobos usually have a mixture of PCI-E and PCI slots.

[cotswoldcs]

You've got a 32Mb TNT card - nice!

Let's put it this way. You've got a reasonable system (P4 2.8Ghz, 1Gb RAM, rubbish graphics card, etc). I don't know what plans you have but if it were me I would buy a budget/ mid range AGP card, knowing that when you do replace your system/ motherboard, you won't want to take your AGP card with you. Even if you were looking for a new motherboard today, I doubt if you'd go for an AGP based system. So buy a cheap AGP card and then replace when you buy/ build a new system. Or don't... I don't mind.

AGP isn't dead yet - but I don't think there will be many AGP motherboards around for much longer. People with older systems may still want to upgrade so there is demand for AGP cards. The cutting edge cards are almost exclusively going to be PCI Express from now on.