ATI PCI Express question

[BCC]

Hi,

If I bought a dell 8400, which has an ATI PCI Express x300 card, can I
upgrade that card to a retail ATI x800 XT Platinum after I purchase the
system?

Do the retail ATI X800 XTs take advantage of PCI Express? How the heck does
that work anyways.

I want to have the good card, but the 8400 is way cheaper than the XPS gen 3
and is pretty much identical except that card. So it would be cheaper to
buy the 8400 and then the macho card than the xps gen 3.

Love to hear any comments or thoughts!

B

 

[J. Clarke]

Hi,

If I bought a dell 8400, which has an ATI PCI Express x300 card, can I
upgrade that card to a retail ATI x800 XT Platinum after I purchase the
system?

Do the retail ATI X800 XTs take advantage of PCI Express? How the heck
does that work anyways.

I want to have the good card, but the 8400 is way cheaper than the XPS gen
3
and is pretty much identical except that card. So it would be cheaper to
buy the 8400 and then the macho card than the xps gen 3.

Love to hear any comments or thoughts!

PCI Express uses a different slot from AGP and Intel does not support AGP on
chipsets that support PCI Express. If you want to use an X800XT in a
machine with PCI Express you have to buy one that is made specifically for
PCI Express. If you froogle "X800 PCI Express" you'll find a number of
them.

Since there is no benefit whatsoever to using PCI Express for video at this
time, and since it's the first generation of a new technology and thus
likely to be buggy, personally I'd avoid it.

 

[BCC]

PCI Express uses a different slot from AGP and Intel does not support AGP on
chipsets that support PCI Express. If you want to use an X800XT in a
machine with PCI Express you have to buy one that is made specifically for
PCI Express. If you froogle "X800 PCI Express" you'll find a number of
them.

Since there is no benefit whatsoever to using PCI Express for video at this
time, and since it's the first generation of a new technology and thus
likely to be buggy, personally I'd avoid it.

Thanks for the info John. Couple of questions though... why do you say
there is no benefit? If a mother board has been designed to use it and the
card is designed for it, should they not work as designed- i.e. better than
agp?

Kind of moot anyways, since dell only offers their newer machines with the
pci express cards. I have no particular loyalty to dell, but I dont have
time to build a machine myself, and the only other vendors I know of
(alienware, falcon for a couple) make machines that are WAY more expensive
than dell.

B

 

[J. Clarke]

Thanks for the info John. Couple of questions though... why do you say
there is no benefit? If a mother board has been designed to use it and
the card is designed for it, should they not work as designed- i.e. better
than agp?

If AGP was a bottleneck then that would be the case, but so far no CPU or
video processor on the market can saturate the AGP bus--if you check
benchmark sites you'll find that the difference in performance between AGP
4x and 8x is almost too small to measure.

Kind of moot anyways, since dell only offers their newer machines with the
pci express cards. I have no particular loyalty to dell, but I dont have
time to build a machine myself, and the only other vendors I know of
(alienware, falcon for a couple) make machines that are WAY more expensive
than dell.

You're going to find that vendors who use Intel chipsets are going to be
going exclusively to PCI Express because Intel for some reason wants the
market to go that way and so are not including AGP support in their latest
chipsets.

Personally I find that I can generally build a machine from pile of boxes to
running with OS and major software installed in one evening.

 

[NoRemorse]

If AGP was a bottleneck then that would be the case, but so far no CPU or
video processor on the market can saturate the AGP bus--if you check
benchmark sites you'll find that the difference in performance between AGP
4x and 8x is almost too small to measure.


You're going to find that vendors who use Intel chipsets are going to be
going exclusively to PCI Express because Intel for some reason wants the
market to go that way and so are not including AGP support in their latest
chipsets.

Personally I find that I can generally build a machine from pile of boxes to
running with OS and major software installed in one evening.

And you get the parts YOU want and not a narrowed-down selection.

 

[patrickp]

And you get the parts YOU want and not a narrowed-down selection.

I think, as well, for people who don't have much time, it's something
you can put the odd 1/2 hour in as and when. It's probably fair to
say that an inexperienced system builder is not going to get it done
in one evening - but it's not the sort of thing you have to put big
chunks of time aside for. That also means you can stop by the various
groups like this when you need help, too.

It's not only that you get the setup you want, you also learn a lot
more about how to use it most effectively.

Until you find that you've just _got_ to get it up and running right
now...! Think most of us have probably been there...

patrickp

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