What level of card is too much for AGP bus?

[eobard]

To my surprise I've noticed a few etailers listing cards like Radeon 3850s in AGP format and I'm wondering: for both ATI and nVidia, when in their product lines do their cards become too much for the AGP specification?

[Jayws]

Taken from Wikipedia:
AGP 8x - A 32-bit channel operating at 66 MHz, strobing eight times per clock, delivering an effective 533 MHz resulting in a maximum data rate of 2133 MB/s (2 GB/s); 0.8 V signaling.

I think that cards like the 3850 surpass that. I remember seeing an article somewhere that compared PCI-E 1.1 to PCI-E 2.0. The difference was sizable, which would lead me to imagine a similar trend between AGP and PCI-E.

[Jayws]

http://www.agpbattleground.com/3850%20battleground.html

This article would seem to suggest that there is very little difference in terms of frame rate benchmarks. I'm reading some information that suggests that the bandwidth is primarily useful for reducing load times. This would then be a critical component in a game that renders on the fly.

[Quailane]

http://www.agpbattleground.com/3850%20battleground.html

This article would seem to suggest that there is very little difference in terms of frame rate benchmarks. I'm reading some information that suggests that the bandwidth is primarily useful for reducing load times. This would then be a critical component in a game that renders on the fly.

That test is dumb as the video card is not the weakest link in the test systems as well as the games. A 3850 is more video card than a socket 939 can handle. Also that test used OLD games at LOW resolutions. An HD4890 in the same system wouldn't improve the frame rate. Classic CPU bottleneck going on there they try to pass off as AGP being good. For the love of god, the AGP system was scoring higher than PCI-E nearly every time. Complete crap. :mad:

[Jayws]

That test is dumb as the video card is not the weakest link in the test systems as well as the games. A 3850 is more video card than a socket 939 can handle. Also that test used OLD games at LOW resolutions. An HD4890 in the same system wouldn't improve the frame rate. Classic CPU bottleneck going on there they try to pass off as AGP being good. For the love of god, the AGP system was scoring higher than PCI-E nearly every time. Complete crap. :mad:

Valid points, no offense but can you bring something to the table?

[eobard]

Part of the reason I ask this is personal curiosity. Another part is because my wife's current mobo is semi-modern. It's socket 775 and can handle c2d's with an 800 bus. It's got DDR2, SATA. All the modern stuff BUT the graphics slot is AGP. If/when her current card goes, I'm wondering what card would be a waste of money to upgrade to. (assuming that I don't just replace the mobo as well) I'm not planning an upgrade in the near future, but I figured I should do a bit of homework. If it matters she doesn't play demanding 3d games for the most part but has a few that are not cutting edge (no crysis).

[Quailane]

Valid points, no offense but can you bring something to the table?

Top end cards are already severely bottlenecked by PCI-E 1.0 16x, or PCI-E 2.0 8x when running in really high resolutions and with dual GPU's, and this is at about twice the bandwidth of AGP. I would love to see an actual comparison between AGP and PCI-E, with the currently most powerful AGP card ever released, the HD4670, running on an overclocked core2 quad, but that is unlikely. I don't think it will be a big difference. Also, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't release a card if it was way too bottlenecked by the bus.