PCI Express

[Morgan Sales]

Does anyone know when we can expect to see 'PCI Express' compliant graphics
cards and M/B on the shelves?

Thanks
--
Morgan.
----
* Oh she's fine; just like I promised. She's getting set to marry Commodore
Norrington; just like she promised. And you're going to die for her; just
like you promised. So we're all men of our word really... except for
Elizabeth, who is in fact, a woman.

Mail: (e-mail address removed)
Webpage: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/msales

 

[atwifa]

Does anyone know when we can expect to see 'PCI Express' compliant
graphics

cards and M/B on the shelves?

very quickly, by the sound of it

 

[rms]

very quickly, by the sound of it

July.

rms

 

[Tod]

With in a month or two.

 

[Morgan Sales]

With in a month or two.

Thanks, to all three of you, plus anyone else who might post after this.

--
Morgan.
----
* An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his
fools. :- Ernest Hemingway

Mail: (e-mail address removed)
Webpage: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/msales

 

[Chip]

Thanks, to all three of you, plus anyone else who might post after this.

PCI-Express is certainly the future standard. And if I was buying a new
motherboard *and* a new graphics card in a few months time I'd probably buy
PCI-Express purely because its the latest and greatest.

But I don't expect PCI-Express graphics cards to be even slighly faster than
AGP versions. I can't see it making any difference whatsoever (unless the
manufacturers "cheat" in some way, e.g. clocking the PCI-Express cards
higher.)

Chip

 

[Destroy]

But I don't expect PCI-Express graphics cards to be even slighly faster than

AGP versions. I can't see it making any difference whatsoever (unless the
manufacturers "cheat" in some way, e.g. clocking the PCI-Express cards
higher.)

Exactly. Have no clue why PCI Express is even needed. Games are still
going to rely on the vid card memory (new ones having 256mb min now)
more so than purely relying on bus transfer of textures.

 

[J. Clarke]

Exactly. Have no clue why PCI Express is even needed. Games are still
going to rely on the vid card memory (new ones having 256mb min now)
more so than purely relying on bus transfer of textures.

Planned obsolescence. Can't get a video board with AGP then you have to
have get a new motherboard to fit your new video board. Can't get a
motherboard with AGP then you have to get a new video board to fit your new
motherboard.

Makes one want to take up Christianity just so one can comfort oneself with
the belief that there is a special place in Hell for those who come up with
such ideas.

 

[Chip]

Not if you are using AMD. AMD has no plans to switch to PCI-Express, or
BTX. That's what I read at The Inquirer anyway. I'm planing to make my
next PC an AMD64 w/X800 too.

"AMD has no plans to switch to PCI-Express"???!?!??!

I have heard such utter nonsense. The Inquirer really has surpassed itself
this time.

Chip

 

[J. Clarke]

"AMD has no plans to switch to PCI-Express"???!?!??!

I have heard such utter nonsense. The Inquirer really has surpassed itself
this time.

Well, it's one of those statements that may be entirely true to also mostly
meaningless. Since BTX is more of a form-factor issue than an electronic
issue and AMD doesn't make motherboards or power supplies or cases, it's
reasonable that AMD would not be "switching to BTX". Since PCI Express is
a southbridge issue and AMD, while they make such devices, does so only for
marketing reasons, it is reasonable that they would not be planning to
"switch to PCI Express", leaving that to the third party chipset
manufacturers who produce the majority of South Bridge chips used with AMD
processors..

 

[Morgan Sales]

PCI-Express is certainly the future standard. And if I was buying a
new motherboard *and* a new graphics card in a few months time I'd
probably buy PCI-Express purely because its the latest and greatest.

But I don't expect PCI-Express graphics cards to be even slighly
faster than AGP versions. I can't see it making any difference
whatsoever (unless the manufacturers "cheat" in some way, e.g.
clocking the PCI-Express cards higher.)

I'm assuming that this is because the I/O port speed is not currently
throttling the speed of the cards. However, seeing as PCI E cards arn't out
yet we can't jump to your conclution. Saying that, you almost certainly
*ARE* right. But we can live in hope.

On a side note, anyone know when a 64 bit version of Windows is coming
out?(longhorn or whatever they're calling it an the moment.)
--
Morgan.
----
* I don't mind a parasite, I object to a cut rate one. :- Humphrey Bogart,
Casablanca.

Mail: (e-mail address removed)
Webpage: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/msales

 

[J. Clarke]

I'm assuming that this is because the I/O port speed is not currently
throttling the speed of the cards. However, seeing as PCI E cards arn't
out
yet we can't jump to your conclution. Saying that, you almost certainly
*ARE* right. But we can live in hope.

On a side note, anyone know when a 64 bit version of Windows is coming
out?(longhorn or whatever they're calling it an the moment.)

If you want to be technical a 64-bit version of Windows was out so long ago
it's been discontinued. The version of NT 4.0 for the DEC Alpha, which is
a 64-bit processor, came on the NT4 CD. After Compaq took over DEC and
sold the Alpha production line to Intel and stopped put much effort into
developing the processor, support was dropped due to lack of interest.

Longhorn is the next release of Windows--it will be out in 32-bit and 64-bit
versions, but 64-bit XP is likely to ship before Longhorn. You can
download a 360-day time-bombed beta of XP for AMD-64 off the Microsoft site
<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/downloads/upgrade.asp>. You can
download a 180-day time-bombed beta of 2K3 Server for Itanium from
<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/trial/evalkit.mspx#XSLTsection124121120120>.
You may want to do that--it's possible that Microsoft will have a pay beta
later that will get you a copy of the release version at a big discount--if
you're on the mailing list you'll be sure to get notified.

 

[Slug]

PCI-Express is certainly the future standard.

Not if you are using AMD. AMD has no plans to switch to PCI-Express, or
BTX. That's what I read at The Inquirer anyway. I'm planing to make my
next PC an AMD64 w/X800 too.

 

[Chip]

I'm assuming that this is because the I/O port speed is not currently
throttling the speed of the cards. However, seeing as PCI E cards arn't out
yet we can't jump to your conclution. Saying that, you almost certainly
*ARE* right. But we can live in hope.

If you want to see what sort of speed improvement you might get, try setting
your AGP speed to 4X in the bios, run 3dmark2001 (or whatever) and then set
the bios back to 8X and try again. I think you'll find it makes hardly any
difference at all.

Now one argument is that games authors will start to make games that need
huge amounts of textures that just won't fit in the graphics card memory and
which need to be paged in from system memory. This would be a very bad
thing if they did. But if they did this, then the faster PCI-Express bus
speed would help. But we'd be loading textures from slow system memory
(which means god forbid it might even have to get paged in from your
swapfile!!!). I just can't see this being at all viable.

So given that not much traffic is going to be travelling across the bus,
then I can't see how speeding it up will make games run faster.

Chip.

 

[Ken Maltby]

If you want to see what sort of speed improvement you might get, try setting
your AGP speed to 4X in the bios, run 3dmark2001 (or whatever) and then set
the bios back to 8X and try again. I think you'll find it makes hardly any
difference at all.

Now one argument is that games authors will start to make games that need
huge amounts of textures that just won't fit in the graphics card memory and
which need to be paged in from system memory. This would be a very bad
thing if they did. But if they did this, then the faster PCI-Express bus
speed would help. But we'd be loading textures from slow system memory
(which means god forbid it might even have to get paged in from your
swapfile!!!). I just can't see this being at all viable.

So given that not much traffic is going to be travelling across the bus,
then I can't see how speeding it up will make games run faster.

Chip.

This almost sounds like a description of "Far Cry", to me.

Luck;
Ken

 

[OverKlocker]

PCI-Express is certainly the future standard. And if I was buying a new
motherboard *and* a new graphics card in a few months time I'd probably buy
PCI-Express purely because its the latest and greatest.

But I don't expect PCI-Express graphics cards to be even slighly faster than
AGP versions. I can't see it making any difference whatsoever (unless the
manufacturers "cheat" in some way, e.g. clocking the PCI-Express cards
higher.)

Chip

i read something about faster communication with the cpu on both the
upload AND download. from what i read it should boost things up a bit.
but who knows by how much... we'll wait and see

 

[Chip]

i read something about faster communication with the cpu on both the
upload AND download. from what i read it should boost things up a bit.
but who knows by how much... we'll wait and see.

I think you are right. i.e. PCI-Express is bi-directional, whereas AGP
transfers only go in one direction. Having said that, I can't imagine why
on earth you'd want to send data (in large quantity) from the graphics card
to main memory.

Chip

 

[J. Clarke]

i read something about faster communication with the cpu on both the
upload AND download. from what i read it should boost things up a bit.
but who knows by how much... we'll wait and see

AGP 8x gives faster communication with the CPU than does AGP 4x, on both the
upload AND download, but there is no discernible real-world performance
difference between them. If the interface is not the bottleneck then
running it at infinite speed will make no difference in performance.

 

[dg]

I don't think that PCI-Express is all about the video cards, there are other
uses for fast PCI slots.

--Dan

 

[Dodgy]

Exactly. Have no clue why PCI Express is even needed. Games are still
going to rely on the vid card memory (new ones having 256mb min now)
more so than purely relying on bus transfer of textures.

It's just removing a future bottle neck before we hit it.

You wouldn't like it if your house was only wired to support 10 x
60watt lighbulbs and you needed a complete rewire and new fuse board
when you wanted to a brighten up a few rooms with 100watt bulbs!

D0d6y.