PCI Express motherboards, how soon?

R

res0r89p

Hi,
Does anyone know how how soon motherboards with PCI Express slots will be
available? PCI Express is supposed to be much faster than AGP. Thanks.
Peter Cowie
 
J

JAD

and when you get it, what video card will you get...then what
software will be taking advantage of it?
 
T

Tim

JAD said:
and when you get it, what video card will you get...then what
software will be taking advantage of it?

EXACTLY We'll just be beta-testers, for products that won't be practical
for at least another year (although that's not unusual in this industry).
Then again, some people just want the latest technology.
 
D

Dave C.

res0r89p said:
Hi,
Does anyone know how how soon motherboards with PCI Express slots will be
available? PCI Express is supposed to be much faster than AGP. Thanks.
Peter Cowie

You mean theoretically faster. Most video processing is done on the video
card, so a faster expansion slot won't help any. It will help for some very
limited applications. For the typical home user, PCI Express won't make any
performance difference, not even for games. In fact, half of the first
round of PCI Express graphics cards are going to be identical to their AGP
counterparts, with a bridge chip installed to allow them to be installed in
a PCI express expansion slot. -Dave
 
H

Hugo Drax

res0r89p said:
Hi,
Does anyone know how how soon motherboards with PCI Express slots will be
available? PCI Express is supposed to be much faster than AGP. Thanks.
Peter Cowie


Why is it faster? Videocards dont do much with AGP since they now ship with
128 or 256MB which is more than enough for texture memory and new games used
compressed textures making the memory even more than sufficient. AGP was
designed for cards with insufficent texture/vertex memory. No gamer will buy
such a card anyways.

Dont get sucked into marketing speak.
 
F

Freddie Clark

res0r89p said:
Hi,
Does anyone know how how soon motherboards with PCI Express slots will be
available? PCI Express is supposed to be much faster than AGP. Thanks.
Peter Cowie
I dont think PCI express was intended to address the AGP issue, it was
intended to provide a reliable bus that any card could be slotted into and
(at the same time) bypass the current limitations of the PCI bus, ie 33mhxz
operation. I do know that it will be (by necessity) backward compatible. But
it seems to me that it was designed more for fast SCSI/Ethernet/Sound cards
rather than a replacement for AGP.
Rather like the introduction of the eisa bus.

regards
Freddie
 
M

Mike Harrison

Freddie Clark said:
I dont think PCI express was intended to address the AGP issue, it was
intended to provide a reliable bus that any card could be slotted into and
(at the same time) bypass the current limitations of the PCI bus, ie 33mhxz
operation. I do know that it will be (by necessity) backward compatible. But
it seems to me that it was designed more for fast SCSI/Ethernet/Sound cards
rather than a replacement for AGP.
Rather like the introduction of the eisa bus.
It's perfect for cards like HDTV capture cards, where full HD video
would require more bandwidth that regular PCI can deliver.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top