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Pci-e x16...whats the deal?

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IceWilly

Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2003
What happened to pci-e x16 vid cards. I thought they were supposed to be getting more mainstream by now. I am waiting to upgrade to an pci-e gfx card and at the moment is hard to even find places that sell them.

Also, does anyone know what the deal is with performance?
I know this card bus has the potential to outperform agp by alot? but will the first wave have a noticable improvement over their Agp cousins?

1) When will pci-e cards be more mainstream?
2) Are they going to outperform AGP 8x cards when they come out?

thanks alot, its hard to find info about pci-e cards. i thought by now everyone would be talking about them :( hope its not just me...
 
1) you should start seeing it more in more in the next few months but there is stuff out now

2) currently they don't show any real gains over AGP 8X which hasn't been fully tapped. Maybe in a generation or 2 they will be outperformed, but not really worth it right now unless you are already buying a new motherboard.
 
well ill be making my a64 system in the winter, and i am definetly going to get a board with pci-e gfx on it...

but... will i be buying a pci-e card right away?

The more and more i keep reading and rereading what little information there is about these pci-e cards it seems like they are just going to be a gimic at first, and not even have a huge performance difference from agp cards.

My question is... Why is anyone bothering to develop and work on pci-e cards if no one is going to full out support the slot type when it comes out?

is like making a new cpu slot, and then saying... oh socket A is good enough lets just keep using that. I don't get it.
 
The idea is to have PCI-E platforms in place and in the mainstream by the time technology advances to the point where the AGP bus is saturated and we need to move to PCI-E.
 
Some of the first boards to come out with PCIe will also have an AGP slot for backward compatibility, from what I've read. So you wouldn't necessarily have to buy a PCIe video card when buying the new motherboard.
 
The PCI-Express slot in terms of performance is pretty much just a gimmic right now, but it's the other reasons that manufacturers are looking toward the slot. Futureproofing, adding new features of the bus, etc. all make for a reasonable idea to move ahead. Mobo manufacturers just need to hurry up and publicly release some boards so we can get this change moving.

JigPu
 
JigPu said:
The PCI-Express slot in terms of performance is pretty much just a gimmic right now, but it's the other reasons that manufacturers are looking toward the slot. Futureproofing, adding new features of the bus, etc. all make for a reasonable idea to move ahead. Mobo manufacturers just need to hurry up and publicly release some boards so we can get this change moving.

JigPu

The new Intel 915/925 mobos are widely available now, it's a lack of high-end PCI-E vid cards that is the hold up.
 
The NForce 4 chipset will support SLI, so it will have two slots for vid cards. It is due at the very end of this year. I'm not sure if it will be released for the socket 940 platform though.
 
the NForce 4 chipset should be compatible with both 939 and 940 chips I would assume then again we know what they say about assumers.
 
Some of the first boards to come out with PCIe will also have an AGP slot for backward compatibility, from what I've read. So you wouldn't necessarily have to buy a PCIe video card when buying the new motherboard.

yea i realize this, and the way things are looking right now i'll probably end up buying another agp card. Man i was really hoping that this pc upgrade would come at just the right time when the next gen techs (pci-e and socket 939) were settling down. Seems like i am still going to be early. :bang head

so the nForces are suppposed to be around by winter? what features is it going to have that aren't on nF3?
 
DanIdentity said:
The new Intel 915/925 mobos are widely available now, it's a lack of high-end PCI-E vid cards that is the hold up.
I stand corrected then :) I have never been much of an Intel man, and thought that surely AMD boards would recieve PCI-E at nearly the same time as Intel boards.

However, after more searching, it appears that Newegg definatly has quite a few high end (although not top of the line 6800s or X800s) PCI-Express video cards. The wait is on top of the line instead of high end cards, since I don't think many will consider switching unless the card truly is top of the line.

JigPu
 
JigPu said:
I stand corrected then :) I have never been much of an Intel man, and thought that surely AMD boards would recieve PCI-E at nearly the same time as Intel boards.

However, after more searching, it appears that Newegg definatly has quite a few high end (although not top of the line 6800s or X800s) PCI-Express video cards. The wait is on top of the line instead of high end cards, since I don't think many will consider switching unless the card truly is top of the line.

JigPu

Yeah when I said "high-end," I was referring to PCI-E X800's and 6800's. X600's are widely available in PCI-E, but they're based on the 9600 core and are no faster. I'd rather have one of the X800's or 6800's.
 
IceWilly, the performance difference at this time can not be differentiated with AGP and PCI-E. You'll find by reading various articles, the only large difference is encoding HDTV video. You'll even be more surprised when you read there is not a noticeable difference between 4x and 8x AGP speeds. Honestly, you really should wait until the first quarter of next year for your purchase and not be greedy and buy a 6800U AGP like myself. :D

Read a little bit, I'm sure many of you will find it interesting.
 
chawks2 said:
IceWilly, the performance difference at this time can not be differentiated with AGP and PCI-E. You'll find by reading various articles, the only large difference is encoding HDTV video. You'll even be more surprised when you read there is not a noticeable difference between 4x and 8x AGP speeds. Honestly, you really should wait until the first quarter of next year for your purchase and not be greedy and buy a 6800U AGP like myself. :D

Read a little bit, I'm sure many of you will find it interesting.

That is correct. Cards haven't even saturated the 8x AGP bus yet. There's really no need to get a PCIe video card at this time. The first PCIe motherboards will probably feature an AGP slot for backward compatibility anyway.
 
Vince1990uk said:
At the moment the only real advantage on PCI-E is the fact it will be more future proof. You can order PCI-E X800XTs from Komplett (http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/kl.asp?bn=10488) for £334.88, but as you (and me :) ) want to build socket 939 (with PCI-E) systems, I would suggest waiting for nFore4 motherboards, and see what's available at the time.
yeah, i would prefer to wait as well.
you will get cheaper deal, better overall performance(with your new system), lesser bugs in a few months time.
 
Vince1990uk said:
At the moment the only real advantage on PCI-E is the fact it will be more future proof. You can order PCI-E X800XTs from Komplett (http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/kl.asp?bn=10488) for £334.88, but as you (and me :) ) want to build socket 939 (with PCI-E) systems, I would suggest waiting for nFore4 motherboards, and see what's available at the time.
yeah, i would prefer to wait as well.
you will get cheaper deal, better overall performance(with your new system), lesser bugs in a few months time. :attn: :attn: :attn:
 
I wont upgrade till NF4 either. Hopefully they will make their SLI compatible with AGP and not just PCI-E. Wishful thinking I guess. I don't want to part with my 6800GT so fast! :cry:
 
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