upgrade to PCI?

[The VerticalSTAB]

Just wondered when i look at prices for the PCI graphics crads they seem to
be cheaper than AGP card why is this? Also is PCI alot faster than AGP is it
worth the up-grade? What card would be best for me i m going to spend upto
£300 on a card .

thanks in advance

 

[James]

Just wondered when i look at prices for the PCI graphics crads they seem to
be cheaper than AGP card why is this? Also is PCI alot faster than AGP isit
worth the up-grade? What card would be best for me i m going to spend upto
£300 on a card .

thanks in advance

First of all, we have to differentiate between PCI and PCI Express. PCI
is a general purpose slot. There are some PCI cards out there, but not
many, and none of the latest and greatest are available for PCI.

PCI Express on the other hand is the latest and greatest. In theory the
slot should have twice the bandwidth of the fastest AGP slot (16x
versus 8x) but in practise it doesn't usually show.

The important question is - what does your motherboard have in it? I
have seen a very few MBs that have both, normally its one or the other.


PCIexpress cards may be cheaper than their AGP equivalents because of
supply and demand. The manufacturers make more PCIexpress cards these
days. There are fewer MBs coming with AGP and no new chipsets support
it.

Caution about spending so much on a card. Your video card may or may
not be your bottleneck. In many games, RAM is also important and it may
be a bigger improvement to have 1 or 2 GB of RAM and a mid range card
than 512 and a high end one.

James

 

[Frodo]

I'm assuming you are talking about PCI-Express, not PCI.
It can cost more to make an AGP card over a PCI-Express card.
Cards with GPUs (Graphics process units) originally designed for
PCI-Express, need an extra bridge chip to work on AGP.
PCI-Express slots can provide more power over the older AGP slot.
So cards that can normally powered by the PCI-Express might require an extra
power connection to work with an AGP card.
PCI-Express slots are faster then AGP, but it usually makes very little
difference in the over all performance of the graphics card.

 

[The VerticalSTAB]

Yea sorry guys i did mean PCI E at the moment i just running a AGP radeon
9700 and a AMD 3200xp so it time to upgrade

Thanks for your advice though

 

[LostSoul]

1. pci card -slow - old part
2. agp card - fast - semi old part
3. pci-e fastest and newest design stay away from 1600 series
4. pci-e dx10 card ati's are coming out 2nd quarter 2007 - and nvidia 8800
is out but no vista to incorporate dx 10 - holy grail in evolution of gaming
when combined with vista an dx 10 games
5. new part coming summer 2008 - blow youre socks off graphics an eyes out
of sockets - incorporate dx 10.?? speculation

 

[Greg Campbell]

Yea sorry guys i did mean PCI E at the moment i just running a AGP radeon
9700 and a AMD 3200xp so it time to upgrade

IMO,
Get something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102606
or something close, and call it 'done.' A card roughly this powerful is
a pretty good match for your processor. Spending more on a vidcard
won't get you much, since the CPU will (depending on the game) start to
become the limiting factor.

Put the left over money back in the bank. You'll need that extra cash
later for a more comprehensive upgrade (mobo, CPU, vidcard, memory)
sometime down the road. As others have pointed out, it's VERY unlikely
that your current motherboard will support a PCI-E card.

It's unfortunate that AGP is now 'obsolete,' with DDR soon to follow.
Of course this is all by design, and the Evil Scheme seems to be working
well - forcing people to abandon the incremental upgrade path that has
been available for the last few years.

Give http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&pgno=0 a look and
compare bandwidth and fill rate for any potential cards. These are the
two major performance indicators on any card you'll be buying. (Newer
cards are more complex, with raw fillrate becomes relatively less
important.)