ATI PCI-Express Devices Revealed

JohnQ writes "According to Xbitlabs and AnandTech, the specifications for ATI's newest graphics cards have been revealed. Interesting to note is that all of these next generation video cards will run exclusively on the PEG (PCI-Express x16) interface. This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards. Read more about the roadmaps on Anandtech and Xbitlabs"

Comments

Cheaper prices

[di0s]

This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards.

But it does bode well for those of us who want cheaper AGP Radeons.

Re:Cheaper prices

[flewp]

This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards.

I actually fail to see why it hurts those of us that did buy the last generation of cards. I needed a video card, this was the best out there (well best bang for the buck) so I bought one. How does this news affect something I did in the past and why would it affect my future? Anyone care to explain?

Re:Cheaper prices

[Short Circuit]

As the parent pointed out, AGP cards may come down in price. So if you just bought the latest Radeon 9800 at $500, you'll have to watch helplessly as others buy it at $50 bargain bin prices a couple years from now.

To be fair, I disagree with the assessment. If AGP cards become rare, while people hold on to their AGP-supporting motherboards (especially those running Athlon64's), their value is going to rise. At least, it'll rise up to just before the point where it's cheaper for people to get a new mb (and RAM, and CPU) along with their video card.

Re:Cheaper prices

[ViolentGreen]

As the parent pointed out, AGP cards may come down in price. So if you just bought the latest Radeon 9800 at $500, you'll have to watch helplessly as others buy it at $50 bargain bin prices a couple years from now.

This is true anyway. This year's top of the line card will be the low-end "bargain card" in two or three years. Anytime you buy the top-of-the-line anything you have to be aware of that. The only difference in this is that you will need a new motherboard for the new cards. But since these cards aren't available yet, what's the big deal?

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

What the author is saying is that he went and bought an expensive card and now he is kicking hisself because it sounds like they are about to get a whole lot cheaper.

Re:Cheaper prices

[beuges]

I would think its because if the new kickass graphics cards are going to be PCI-X or whatever it is, then apart from having spent big bucks on a new video card, which is going to become alot cheaper very soon, when time comes to upgrade, you're going to have to shell out for a new mobo as well

Re:Cheaper prices

[Lumpy]

I also agree, those that whine about that really are clueless about what they really are whining about.

at work there is a Dual processor P-III they want to upgrade to the highest speed processor it can take (1ghz) + 2 gig of ram.

it is cheaper to buy a new motherboard (AthlonMP) + 2 processors that are next generation + next gen ram.

it is silly to try and keep older tech running, simply buy new. Besides, if you are going to get that video card, you are going to be using bleeding edge motherboard+processor anyways. which means buying new.

Re:Cheaper prices

[sumaeS]

My problem is that I'll have to make not only a graphics upgrade, but a motherboard upgrade as well. A few months ago I spent over $200 on a motherboard with the new AGP 8x. Now its the new PCIe.

I really hope that they will keep making new AGP 8x cards for awhile.

Re:Cheaper prices

[ViolentGreen]

As an aside...is your sig a reference to Super Mario World?

Nope "Aqua Teen Hunger Force"

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's stupid to try and upgrade old systems when it's uneconomical to do so. However, keeping an old system running and assigning it to a suitable task is not a silly thing to do at all. Not only does it save money, it is better for the environment and that's typically still true even if the old model uses more electricity which is generally not the case.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

dont expect the next gen hardware to fit in last gen hardware.

again the point is moot. if you want the next gen super shiny precious... you gotta get everything else next gen.

Re:Cheaper prices

[TopShelf]

"Have to"???

Unless you've got money burning in your pocket, I don't see the need for even a hardcore gamer to constantly jump at the absolute latest & greatest cards as soon as they come out. Although if they do, they should understand that they're paying top dollar each and every time.

Besides, the last I recall, it's not like the AGP 8X is getting overwhelmed, is it? That's not exactly the bottleneck in most systems...

Re:Cheaper prices

[Awptimus Prime]

It's not like someone put a gun to your head and said you have to upgrade.

Your best bet is to research before buying. We've known for a while that AGP is not going to be the fastest option for much longer.

Anyway, for a game box or workstation, there is no need to spend more than $170 for the highest end, basic, motherboard of the day. That'll get you a fine overclocking board with SATA RAID, network card, all the ports you need, etc.

My advice: Ignore marketing, buy what you need, and always tweak your system to the fullest. Accept the fact that your gear will depreciate in value quickly.

The last time I was grumpy over innovation was spending almost $400 on a first generation Matrox card, just to have to turn around a year later and pay $300 for a 3DFX card. $700 worth of video in a PPro200, which was ~ $1500 for the motherboard and CPU. It was the 'best' for a short time, then old, now worthless.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Boone^]

A few months ago I held out on upgrading because PCI-E was already being bantered about quite heavily. It's all about doing your homework before you spent the dollars.

Besides, who said computer hardware is an investment?

Re:Cheaper prices

[JPriest]

I have an ATI Pro 9600 and I never seem to have trouble playing every game I own at the highest resolutiion with all the settings up. That system is pretty new so by the time I upgrade it I will probably be upgrading to a 64 bit platform anyway.

Re:Cheaper prices

[jridley]

Absolutely. Video cards are like sand in the wind. I'm not a gamer myself, so I get to be amused as my friends pay $500 for a card, then sell it on eBay 12 months later for $200 and buy another $500 card.

I recently pulled a graphics card out of the trash box at work and we putting it into a test box. A friend laughed and said that he had paid several hundred bucks for that "top end" video card about 4 or 5 years ago, and now it wasn't even worth keeping out of the dumpster; any $30 cheapo would whip it these days.

I also don't see how this hurts buyers of the latest AGP cards. It's not like you won't buy a new card when you build a new machine, anyway; by the time you build a new machine that $500 card will be a lamer POS anyway.

Re:Cheaper prices

[JPriest]

"ATI's GPUs will be available in both PCIe and AGP flavors throughout 2004."

I guess even the submitter did not RTFA.

Re:Cheaper prices

[sumaeS]

I believe you may have misunderstood, or perhaps I did not clarify. When I upgrade, I will need to upgrade my motherboard. This could very well be a year or two from now.

My point is that unless they keep making AGP counterparts to the PCIe cards that can get similar performance, I will have to make a motherboard upgrade. The AGP 8x cards are backwards compatible, so people with rather old boards could still upgrade to the latest AGP cards. PCIe graphics are not backwards compatible, as there is nothing for it to be backwards compatible with. In other words, now it's definitely going to take a motherboard upgrade to get a new graphics card, unless AGP counterparts to the PCIe cards are continually released.

So it's not that I have money burning in my pocket and I need to spend it. Quite the opposite, actually.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Ares Halcyon]

If ATI will offer both AGP and PCIe versions of their cards throughout 2004, how is this bad for those that just bought the latest gen of AGP card?

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

So your point is basically that you feel naked in the social world unless you have the best, most expensive video card at all times? Sorry, but you don't NEED to upgrade every year, not even for the latest games. Only for bragging rights.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Aapje]

If AGP cards become rare, while people hold on to their AGP-supporting motherboards (especially those running Athlon64's), their value is going to rise.

Exactly. I actually think this will be a boon to those who bought expensive video cards, because many people will want to keep their motherboards and only upgrade their videocard (& CPU). Those people cannot buy a PCI-Express card and they have to fight over your second-hand AGP card (which means higher prices), while you buy the fastest hardware for yourself.

On the other hand, I don't really expect ATI to give up on AGP. I bet that they will do what they have always done. Take the old generation and discount it. The replacement market is too important to give up, so they will simply keep selling two types of video cards for the time being.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

This is funny since the R420 is AGP while the R423 is the R420 with PEG in place of AGP so it won't be until the generation beyond that will end up with PEG only... likely the R500

Re:Cheaper prices

[EMN13]

Sure AGP is a sort of bottleneck - similarly to how Ultra-ATA133 can be a bottleneck and serial ATA can perform better - it's not just bandwidth that matters.

In PCI-Express's case (I haven't read up on this for months so it's not so fresh) some of the improved things are cache-control, which can now be driver controlled, error detection and handling (PCI doesn't have this, can be an annoying cause for hidden data-corruption), p2p in the sense that devices can send info directly to each other...
Another important issue is buffer management and relaxed ordering and just general smartness and better QoS / data-type-awareness (this should improve effective streaming bandwidth, and improve choices in case bandwidth is low, etc.)

PCI Express is definitely a step forwards - however, that it will really matter too much for video cards initially, given that the drivers will need to be adapted make use of the new features, is unlikely.

--Eamon Nerbonne

Re:Cheaper prices

[adamjaskie]

Thats how I feel.I just put together a dual Athlon 2600+ system with a Radeon 9700 pro. My next upgrade will be to a (hopefully dual) Athlon 64 system, but it won't be for at least a year or two. My 9700 pro and dual 2600s should play most any game that I can buy for the next two years. Hell, my Pentium III 450 with a Rage 128 ran Quake III quite playably. It was at 800x600 with minimum detail, but it was playable.

Re:Cheaper prices

[johnjosephbachir]

wrap yourself around the dvds meatwad

Re:Cheaper prices

[Mr. Piddle]

If AGP cards become rare, while people hold on to their AGP-supporting motherboards (especially those running Athlon64's), their value is going to rise.

Seriously, when in the history of PCs has this ever happened? Supply-and-demand breaks down when the word "obselete" creeps into peoples' minds. We're not talking baseball cards, here.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Sepper]

It's all a question of point of view (or relativity)

I still use my old Voodoo3 2000 AGP as my primary Video card. Why? It still works, and in ANY OS! no sense in paying 500$, since the only game I can't play is unreal Tournament 2003( and 2004)...

Yes, any 'Cheapo' could beat the crap out of it, but we don't all have money to trow out the windows...


Ahhh, dammit... I posted offtopic AGAIN....

Re:Cheaper prices

[jridley]

Well, as I say, I'm not a gamer so I'm not buying those cards. My wife's machine has a 3 year old Radeon VE, I just use commodity video cards. Actually I use on-board video mostly for my machines. Lately GeForce 4 but I honestly wouldn't even know if the 3D stuff didn't work. Hell, on my Linux boxes I wouldn't even know if the graphics modes didn't work; they get hooked to a monitor to run basic text-mode-only setup and then they run headless for the rest of their lives.

Re:Cheaper prices

[deque_alpha]

Bwahahaha... I did the same thing! Those were thedays eh?

Re:Cheaper prices

[Kenja]

It happens all the time. Go price a pair of PIII 1Ghz CPUs (the high end of what the 100Mhz Buss can support).

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you do need to upgrade every other year to keep a similar level of performance. And you have to keep upgrading at the same pace if you buy cheap cards-you're just a generation behind.

The people you're complaining about are already spending lots of money, the ones who get hurt by this have $120 video cards and want to keep their systems current without having to replace everything before it becomes obsolete. That's the problem here, people who don't want to upgrade every 6 months are being forced to upgrade their motherboards before they need to. In a world with replaceable socket processors, motherboards shouldn't have to be upgraded every other year. Radeon 9800's will get old faster than you seem to think.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Jeff DeMaagd]

So? Prices almost always come down regardless of a change in standards.

And I think AGP will still be supported for a while. Evidence? It's still not hard to find PCI video cards half a decade after the standard was supersceeded. They don't stack up against AGP 4x/8x but they are still readily available and I think are still manufactured. The only wrinkle is that PCI is still available on motherboards, IIRC, eventually neither AGP nor PCI will be on PCI-Express boards.

I really don't think the value of old AGP motherboards will rise, I really don't see the point in clinging to an old standard that hard. I don't see the value of ISA/EISA mainboards rising, except for the fact that the cheaper retailers sell out of their stock, and the pricier ones may still have new-old-stock ones just because people refuse to pay the price.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Ryan Amos]

you can get old TNT2 or RIVA128 cards for less than $10 in bargain bins. They work great in Linux, support a lot of 2D modes, and are well documented. If you're never gonna touch 3D, any video card from the past 6 years will be equivalent in your eyes (unless it's an all-in-wonder, then it's just coo'.)

Re:Cheaper prices

[Short Circuit]

The only reson it hasn't happened before is becuase 8086 systems weren't all that upgradable, and because Intel produced 80386 chips with both 16- and 32-bit front-side buses. That eased the transition. by making it possible to put the same cards you had in your 286 system in your 386 system. Unless they ship systems with both AGP and PCI Express, that transition isn't going to be easy.

Current Athlon64 machines with AGP are going to be great "good enough" machines in the future, because my (future) kid isn't going to need the (future) latest and greatest hardware to play educational games like billiards and xscorch. (Both firmly grounded in physics with limited graphical requirements. Though I'm not saying that eyecandy couldn't be added.)

Re:Cheaper prices

[ArmorFiend]

This isn't going to affect the price of AGP much at all. Look at vanilla PCI video cards these days (remember them?): all within $10 of their AGP cousins.

Re:Cheaper prices

[samdu]

Amiga. Amigas are going for a bundle (especially 3000Ts and 4000s) in the used market. Generally, though, you are correct, especially in the x86 market.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

PCI video cards aren't around because people like to play high end games on them. Everyone I know who uses a PCI card is using it for multiple monitors-something you simply can't do with just AGP unless you get one of those cards with dual display support.

Old PCI cards sometimes cost more than AGP cards of similar power, because people want them for a second monitor, and almost nobody needs an obsolete AGP card.

All of this depends on what options motherboards are offering when PCI-Express becomes common. If they don't support regular PCI at all, everyone will have to buy all new cards, and there won't be a used market for them for some time. That's quite expensive, and a lot of people will delay upgrading for a generation or two. No, the world won't end, but we may face all kinds of bitching, moaning, and delays in upgrading.

Re:Cheaper prices

[walt-sjc]

Exactly.

I have a couple PIII 933's that I was looking at using. My old "home server" was a PIII 500. So I started looking at dual P3 motherboards...

I ended up buying a new motherboard, processor, and ram for the price of a dual p3 mobo with similar features. I guess I'll just shitcan (ebay) the old processors and stuff.

As far as my desktop goes, by the time I need to upgrade my video card, I'll be buying a new mobo, processor, and ram anyway. The older processors and mobo chipsets, ram are just too slow. I did just replace the whole desktop system last month with one with SATA drives, 2G ram, etc. I figured it will last me another few years. My old mobo could only handle 512M which is just not enough when you are using VMWARE, OOffice, etc. My old system lasted 4 years. I expect my new one to last close to that.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Short Circuit]

Except that in the future, PCI-X cards won't have AGP cousins. The current cards will be the last of those. (ideally, anyway) Hopefully, the entire PCI bus will be able to be replaced with PCI-X. If I'm making some glaring technical mistake, someone hit me with a 20 lb carp.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

It's PCI Express that's replacing both PCI and AGP. PCI-X was never really available except on server hardware (PCI wasn't fast enough for gigabit networking).

Re:Cheaper prices

[vicotnik]

I actually disagree, at least partially. Prices don't decrease as fast as people think, but the model numbers increase quickly. I bought my new card (ti200->5900XT, $200, got $50 for the old one) around two weeks ago and I noticed that it wasn't entirely easy finding cheap cards that were better. A card like the 9600SE has an impressive looking model number but half the bandwidth of the ti200, and it only costs half as much as the ti200 did two years ago. If you would have bought the 9700Pro when it was new you would have a card that is still among best, it is at least about as good as my 5900XT, but early one you would have had the best card there was. I think people are being fooled by the new cards with lower performance than the previous generation.

Re:Cheaper prices

[spectasaurus]

Hey, want to buy my VESA bus videocard? Only $400. They're getting pretty rare? Just between us, I've also got a MCA bus card too, but I doubt you can afford it.

Re:Cheaper prices

[EchoMirage]

Seriously, when in the history of PCs has this [value rising as parts become rare] ever happened?

All the time. Go look at the price of an "old" Mac G4 cube. Go check out the price of PC100 SODIMM memory at Crucial (approaching $100 for a 256MB stick!). Go check out the price of "old" controller-based modems (i.e. not Winmodems). Just because it happens rarely doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all.

Re:Cheaper prices

[cheezedawg]

IIRC, eventually neither AGP nor PCI will be on PCI-Express boards.

AGP will not be available, but PCI will still be there via a bridge (similar to the old moon ISA bridges when PCI took over).

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

PCI-X != PCI Express. PCI-X has been around on server chipsets for years, and it still suffers a lot of the problems that regular PCI has. PCIe is a completely different packetized serial interface.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

given that the drivers will need to be adapted make use of the new features, is unlikely.

Bull crap. Most of those details are handled by BIOS and are transparent to the driver.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Bullseye_blam]

Yes, you are right; in the short term, the price of these cards will definately drop in the short term, because there will be no shortage of AGP cards to go around.

Down the road however, prices may be artificially inflated (by a small amount) due to a lack of new AGP cards. How much of a difference this makes, I guess we'll see. :)~

Re:Cheaper prices

[__aamkky7574]

1. I just got a new Radeon 9800 Pro on eBay for $240, so I'm not sure those prices you are quoting are for real.

2. Graphics card depreciate endlessly anyway - I think everyone has to get the notion in their head that no matter how much they pay, the card will be worth zip in a few years. The most you can do is get the best bang for your buck at the time when you choose to buy, and then not think about entropy....

3. Even when the PCI Express-only cards come out, it still means a huge set of computers that cannot use these cards. This doesn't compare to the normal situation where most computers can use the latest generation of cards, and therefore the previous generation drops in price.

P.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

"I still use my old Voodoo3 2000 AGP as my primary Video card. Why? It still works, and in ANY OS!"

Sorry to disapoint you, but this is only true to a point. I have a Voodoo5. under windows I tried to run Halo. (to play with gamer brother) the game simply refused to run, it said 'I won't run on this card' I tried another windows demo (a dx9.0b game) and the initial splash screen was badly screwed up. I did not get any further with that game.
I also tried the linux demo ut2004. after several tries I got it to start the game with hardware rendering. The screen was an awfull mess of colored triangles, It was not recognisable as a scene. the software renderer worked, but too slow. The demo plays fine on a brother-inlaws box (mandrake 9.2 TI4200)

For the 3dfx stuff, it looks like they do not 'still work' on any OS.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Awptimus Prime]

Yeah they were. It's amazing how many noobs come to slashdot to complain about how expensive things are.

Little do they realize, upgrading isn't a requirement until they actually have an application that demands it. Especially nowadays. I interact with a systems ranging from 400mhz to 3.2ghz daily, after 1ghz it seems most non-game applications run about the same (assuming you have enough ram). It only seems to matter when I launch BF1942 or UT2004. ;)

Something else I thought was funny, I picked up a 16MB USB drive for $9.00 last week. To think, I spent $744 for the same amount of ram only about 9 years ago. That was at our store's cost, too.

Re:Cheaper prices

[0x1337]

Ooh Ooh - is the MCA one XGA or XGA2 ;-). Gawd - its been such a long time now, I don't even think the XFree86 patches (against some ancient version of XFree86) for those cards are available anymore.

Re:Cheaper prices

[0x1337]

PWND!

I ran q3demo, playably at 800x600, on a PPro 200Mhz with a a Rage Pro under Slackware 9 with the Gatos DRI drivers.

Re:Cheaper prices

[afidel]

Old moon? My 1.2Ghz Athlon has an ISA slot on the mobo, I use it to controll my SCSI Ricoh CDRW and Toshiba CDROM, buying a new controller would have cost me money for no gain in performance.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Video cards are like sand in the wind. I'm not a gamer myself, so I get to be amused as my friends pay $500 for a card, then sell it on eBay 12 months later for $200 and buy another $500 card.

Re:Cheaper prices

[drsmithy]

Actually, that ISA card is probably causing mucho bus stalls and additional wait states - getting a PCI card (even an el cheapo) probably *would* give an overall performance increase (whether it was noticable in anything but a benchmark is another matter).

Re:Cheaper prices

[adamjaskie]

Hmm, I better try the Gatos drivers then. I was running it with Slackware 8 and the DRI drivers that came with X.

Re:Cheaper prices

[nautical9]

Go check out the prices of PC100 or older memory chips. I have plenty of non-poweruser friends and family who want a little boost to their ancient machines, but don't want to buy a new machine outright. I was expecting it to be drop-dead-dirt cheap, but if you can even FIND it available, it's typically priced way higher than it was a few years ago. Buying used can be an option here, however, since you can buy an entire old box at a garage sale for probably cheaper than a couple still-wrapped PC100 memory.

Same thing happened to 9- and 18-gig SCSI drives - damn hard to find now (and I certainly don't want to buy USED drives, since they age poorly with use), but I need some 18-gig's (160-pin) to replace some dead drives in my RAID box. Used to be priced at ~$200 CDN locally, but I can't find them for less than $350 now. I'm better off just paving the box and reconfiging the logical volume with the drives that are left.

Re:Cheaper prices

[elvum]

How is "p2p" any different from PCI bus-mastering? You can already get PCI cards to talk directly to one another.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Crazy Eight]

Should the need arise, would we be required to do the "Fish Dance" at that time?

Re:Cheaper prices

[johnjosephbachir]

-1 offtopic? whatever happened to +1 funny?? this is an AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE QUOTE. from the first mooninite episode.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Mr. Piddle]

Same thing happened to 9- and 18-gig SCSI drives...

I bought a used 10000RPM 9GB SCSI drive for $20; it had come out of a Sun RAID array, I think. PC133 RAM will work in PC100 slots, and 128MB is easily under $40, especially with a store rebate. Perhaps you should shop around more.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Mr. Piddle]

1GHz Pentium IIIs are under $80 at pricewatch.com. Looking at the other CPUs, the price inflation for the faster bus is really quite small and the PIIIs actually fit pretty neatly in the price lists.

Re:Cheaper prices

[Mr. Piddle]

I'm talking PCs, not Amigas. Niche markets for used Amigas, Suns, SGIs, Apples, etc. create their own price structures. Sun equipment, for example, varies widely in price, depending on how confident the vendor is about customer gullibility. Some vendors try to follow Sun's pricing structure, while others recognize that this stuff is ten years old, anyway, so charge a fair price.

Re:Cheaper prices

[ViolentGreen]

Yeah well mine was modded off topic as well.

How fast?

[DebianRcksLindowsLie]

Just exactly HOW fast do we need graphics to get? I for one cannot find ANY display that can do 300 FPS, even if the card can.

Re:How fast?

[fatwreckfan]

You're missing the point. Yes, you don't need to run Q3A at 300fps, but if this new card will run it that fast, then when the next generation of games come out that will make your current card bog down to 15fps, the new one will be able to play it.

Re:How fast?

[grub]

FPS are a byproduct of everything else.

Do those FPS drop when in 24/32 bit colour? How about shading? Realtime anti-aliasing? Maybe stereoscopic display for those with 3D LCD shutter glasses?

My aging GeForce 4 can play games well at 1024x768 but I need to lose a lot of the above features to get a decent frame rate.

Re:How fast?

[turgid]

My aging GeForce 4 can play games well at 1024x768

So does my TNT2 Ultra :-) It plays Quake III Arena (Linux version) real good :-) It's a shame no one's making Linux games any more, or I might feel compelled to upgrade my graphics card.

Re:How fast?

[Sentosus]

I do not disagree with you completely... But all video cards are tradeoffs. I can play UT2004Demo on an Geforce 4MX 420. It is the bottom of the line card. Still, if you lower the resolution to 640X480, it runs well over 60 FPS. FPS are very little in important. FPS @ Resolution with Color Depth and Features is important. So lets not really joke around with the FPS. Lets focus on whether or not where are any advantages to these cards.

Re:How fast?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

It's a shame no one's making Linux games any more

Oh really?

Re:How fast?

[turgid]

Two swallows do not a summer make, but I take your point.

Re:How fast?

[benzapp]

The need for faster graphics cards will continue until a 3D game is indistinguishable from a video recording of reality.

Right now, no graphics card can do that even at 1 FPS.

Once graphics cards can produce full motion video quality graphics, I imagine development of graphics cards will somewhat slow until The Next Big Thing becomes known, like virtual reality or something.

There is a definite goal for graphics card makers. They also know that the future of their respective companies is in fact quite limited. In 10-20 years, I imagine the upgrade cycle for video cards will be effectively over.

I mean, 10 years ago X-Wing was still one of the best 3D games out there. Have you sat down and tried to play it since then? We've come pretty, thats for sure.

Re:How fast?

[Jonathan Platt]

Another thing that ammuses me is that the Human eye can only see arround 24fps yet gammers boast about getting much more. Do they realize most screens perk at about 60 refreshes, while TV/Digital/HD/cinema is only 24-30fps (broadcast, not necesarly what your TV is capable of, which brings to mind another marketing gimick). That's why when you watch a car on TV the wheels speed up untill they eventually appear to be moving backwards slowly. The fact is that the human eye perceives the typical cinema film motion as being fluid at about 18fps (with motion blur).

Re:How fast?

[randomblast]

>It's a shame no one's making Linux games any more, or I might feel compelled to upgrade my graphics card.

Rubbish, it's just the ones on crappy D3D engines, and Half-Life that aren't ported.

And as we all know, they can't port Half-Life because it's a jumbled mess of code mutated from an engine that was upgraded from an engine that was taken from an engine that is now 8 (yes, count them, EIGHT!) years old.
And yes, i hate HL, because i've never been able to get it running at all under Wine or Winex, and my framerate natively under win98 or winXP is about 7FPS at 640x480, with an Athlon 1400, 448MB RAM, and an MX400, which is far ahead of the fastest ststem that was around when HL was released.
And the less i say about steam the better :p

Re:How fast?

[jmauro]

The difference is that if you look at a single frame of film, the picture contains the current picture, part of the previous picture, and then part of the next picture. The movement of the film and the eyes mix all those pictures together to create the motion. Then look at a single frame of a computer game, all the frame contains data for that frame only, no transistions (every thing is crisp.) Games need much higher frame rates in order to trick the eye into seeing motion on static frames, just like how a flip book works. Except that computers can flip the pages at a much, much higher rate to elimiate the flickering and hard transistions that would be visible at 24 frames per second. Granted it does become a game of diminishing returns as you get frame rates higher than 100 fps.

Re:How fast?

[default luser]

Right. You go and perfect a motion-blur trick for 3D hardware that doesn't devour memory like water, and actually looks good.

Have you seen accumulation buffer effects actually put to good use on the PC lately?

The other reason faster framerates rule the competitive gaming scene: the difference between 60 frames per second and 24 frames per second is an extra 25 miliseconds of delay between frame updates. For gamers who strive to optimize all paths of I/O, who complain about pings above 50 miliseconds, who go out and buy a fancy new USB mouse to get 125 Hz updates (8 miliseconds), 25 miliseconds added delay is unacceptable.

Re:How fast?

[turgid]

Oh well. I gave up on Windows at 3.1. I haven't had it at home since 1997, so unless it runs on Linux, Solaris or PalmOS I can't use it. I managed to buy about 6 Loki games when they were still available. Everyone else around here who runs Linux appears to dual-boot into Windows. Not I. Oh well. I'm too old and jaded to be playing games nowadays anyway.

Re:How fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are just simply totally wrong. Learn more. Google up "computer graphics" or something...

Re:How fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hard to believe, my GeForce 4 420Go (the laptop model) gets as low as 5 fps with all the settings as low as possible. And I know people with GeForce 4MX's that get 60 fps in return to wolfenstein, which is a lot less demanding than UT 2004.

Re:How fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever notice how fast side to side pan shots are rare in movies, and have excessive motion blur when they happen? Shots like that happen constantly (every time you look around) in games, and there's no motion blur at all. Movies are watched in darkened theaters, and the contrast makes it look smoother. Games are played on monitors. In games, you're in a feedback loop, not just watching. Try playing a game for once, and you'll see that 60 fps just feels smoother than 25 fps.

And you think most screens peak at 60 Hz? Using a 60 Hz monitor gives me a headache. My eye, whether you think it's human or not, can clearly see the difference between 60Hz and 85Hz. A game isn't maximally responsive until the minimum framerate in the most crowded scene is equal to the refresh rate. That's why when you watch wheels spin backwards, you can still see changes when they continue accelerating. You can't make out the details, but you can sense changes, and that's what matters in games. It's still perfectly playable if the minimum is 30 fps, but getting a minimum like that involves a huge 3 digit maximum.

The human eye percieves cinema as fluid at 18fps because cinema cheats in a lot of ways. The human eye percieves a game as painfully slow and jerky at 18fps.

Re:How fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm, how may FPS do you get running Halo?

Re:How fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Film flickers, you just need to open your eyes and watch. Sideways panning is outright jerky. Once you get used to the fluidity of 100+ fps gaming you don't even want to near a movie theatre.

TV doesn't flicker because of slow phosphorus and wide beams. TV sucks ass on a good monitor.

If you're a 'slow' person yes, you will not realize that film flickers. Or that you were given a bait-n-switch when buying your new washing machine. Or what your wife really does while you're at work.

Re:How fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you believe a boy scout with rabies?

Re:How fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

At a guess, you're probably talking about a 300dpi display, wide-screen, probably 24" wide and 13.5" tall. That's 7200x4050 pixels (29,160,000). Technical reasons will probably push that to a power-of-2 or 8192x4608 (37,748,736). At 120fps, that's around 17 gigabytes of data per second to push around.

Wonder how big a CPU you'll need to push enough data to render something like that?

Re:How fast?

[afidel]

A big problem is that benchmarks measure AVERAGE fps, on complex scenes a card which looks fine at 60fps on average scenes may momentarily bog down well below the 24-30fps needed for the appearance of smoothness. That's why I like benchmarks that include MINIMUM fps because it gives me a good idea if the video will occassionally get jerky.

Re:How fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Resolution is important if you want to be able to pick out your opponent's head to shoot it.

640x480, that head is all of 4x4 pixels.

1600x1200, we're talking about 10x10 pixels.

This is a large difference, though 1600x1200 won't save you if you're at 12fps.

Re:How fast?

[HuguesT]

There is a limit to what refresh rate humans can see, but it is higher than 60Hz, for sure. 60Hz gives me headaches after a while.

Cinema (movies) are captured at 25Hz, but displayed at 100Hz in the theaters (each frame is displayed 4 times). True 25Hz display would trigger epileptic responses in some people and no one could stand it.

I once saw a movie shot at 100Hz, and the difference with normal movies was quite amazing. Next time you go to the movies, look in the center of the screen during a panoramic shot, and tell me if you can't see the refresh rate in the corners.

ATI's GPUs will be available in both PCIe and AGP

[anandpur]

In order to accomplish a bridge-free roadmap, ATI has to have two versions of every GPU: a PCIe and an AGP version (or an AGP substitute). Keep this in mind as we look at the GPUs due out in '04 since you'll be seeing two per market segment, one AGP and one PCIe.

It's also worth noting that all of ATI's GPUs will be available in both PCIe and AGP flavors throughout 2004.

buyers of last-gen AGP cards?

[SoTuA]

Nopes, if all the new products are PCI-X... it doesn't bode well for people who bought high-end AGP-supporting MOTHERBOARDS. Bought it thinking upgrading the vidcard awhile down the road? Think again :/

People who have the last-gen AGP cards will continue to use them...

Re:buyers of last-gen AGP cards?

[ckotchey]

Note that there are two differnet standards - PCI-X is different than "PCI Express".

Re:buyers of last-gen AGP cards?

[DrMindWarp]

PCI-X != PCI-Express

Check out PCI-SIG.

Re:buyers of last-gen AGP cards?

[SoTuA]

Note that there are two differnet standards - PCI-X is different than "PCI Express".

oops! Saw "express" and my brain immediately turned it into X like all the marketing hype (X-treme toilet paper! Now whiter and paperier!)

But the point still stands. I think it hurts AGP-motherboard owners than AGP-card owners. Its kind of usual to replace your vidcard, not to usual to replace your mobo.

Re:buyers of last-gen AGP cards?

[ceeam]

I guess they should rename now PCI-X to "PCI-Express High Speed" to avoid confusion ;)

Re:buyers of last-gen AGP cards?

[whmac33]

I think it hurts AGP-motherboard owners than AGP-card owners

Wouldn't it be logically to say that AGP-card owners are AGP-Motherboard owners so the groups are hurt the same since they are the same group.

Also AGP-Motherboard owners that don't have AGP-cards probably aren't getting the current high end now so the new standard doesn't effect them much.

Re:buyers of last-gen AGP cards?

[freeweed]

Is there going to be a PCI+X as well? :)

great!

[satramell]

at least someone besides viagra is concerned about performance enhancments

This is good news

[caston]

For multi local XF86 user configurationss and people with multi-monitors.

One of the biggest problems at the moment is the expense of (and difficulty finding) PCI video cards backed against the fact that motherboards rarely have more than 1 pci port.

So perhaps in the future we easily add 4-5 PCI Express video cards to our machines.

Re:This is good news

[caston]

Obviously AGP slot..

*donk*

Re:This is good news

[lcs]

As if there all of a sudden will be lots of PCI Express x1 cards around ...

I've yet so see anybody suggesting that lots of el cheapo motherboards will have more than one x16 slot.

Re:This is good news

[lethe1001]

only 1 pci slot? my motherboard has 6! so does every motherboard i have ever seen. perhaps you have only one AGP slot?

Re:This is good news

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the new graphics cards will use what is called PCI-Express For Graphics which has 4 PCI-Express (serial) channels. So it is likely that there will still be only one of these slots on future motherboards.

Re:This is good news

[74nova]

just get a matrox card. agp will get you, i think, up to 6 displays on one card? you can get old dual display 450's for pretty cheap now, too. not much for gaming, but i like it at work for coding.

Re:This is good news

[iantri]

One of the biggest problems at the moment is the expense of (and difficulty finding) PCI video cards backed against the fact that motherboards rarely have more than 1 pci port.

One PCI port?? What are you smoking? Maybe you meant ISA?

One PCI slot is not enough.. you usually need to accommodate a network card and sound card.. maybe a TV tuner, SCSI board, etc.

Re:This is good news

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster meant AGP, as he added over an hour ago. Besides, pretty much all motherboards seem to have onboard sound and networking, and I would hope and expect boards with PCIe also include onboard Serial ATA.

Re:This is good news

[Anonymous Coward]

So perhaps in the future we easily add 4-5 PCI Express video cards to our machines.

Perhaps, but you should realize that PCI Express will have different sized slots. You'll need one of the slots with a lot of connectors (x16 PCI Express slot) for video. Motherboards are probably not going to support more than one or two x16 connectors. For comparison, Gigabit ethernet will only need an x1 connector...

Re:This is good news

[thefultonhow]

Well, it's 16 channels and not four, but you have the right idea. PCI Express for Graphics is going to end up being analogous to AGP -- chipsets will only support one slot. However, the fact that PCI Express x1 slots will themselves have such high bandwidth will mean it won't be as much of a problem for those who want to run multiple graphics cards.

Re:This is good news

[Thomas Shaddack]

More fast displays on one machine? Great for virtual reality! :) Now only if the VR displays would not be THAT AWFULLY expensive...

Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[grub]

I've been patiently waiting for the release of Thief 3 and/orDoom 3 before updating my game PC. It looks like the game will be out before the hardware though, but it illustrates that sitting tight will get you more bang for the buck.

Of course when Duke Nukem Forever comes out you could likely buy a Cray machine for $24.95.

Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[lukewarmfusion]

Anand's site often recommends (for users with a budget, anyway) that people buy stuff that will run the software(games) they want to run now. I agree and make this recommendation often.

Don't spend $400+ on a video card for the performance you'll get on a game in a year or two. Spend $200 on a 9700 Pro (or whatever your pref.) for the games you play now. Then spend another $200 in a couple of years for whatever card you need to run your games. Buying top of the line means paying top dollar.

Then again, this is /.

Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anand's site often recommends (for users with a budget, anyway) that people buy stuff that will run the software(games) they want to run now. I agree and make this recommendation often.

Yup. My current machine is a P3-500 OCd to 566 (wee!) and a GeForce 4. It works well for any game current to about 2001 but is starting to show its age (ie: the Doom 3 leaked demo) I've been waiting to update until the games I want to play are out. If I had bought at the announcement date I'd have a slightly dated machine just to play games I've been playing for years.

Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[pablo_max]

Heck, At newegg you can get a 9800 pro card for 215 barebones and 225 retail. thats not too dang bad for one of the fastest cards out there. Plus realisticaly this gives you 1 1/2 to 2 years of gaming without having to buy a new motherboard that will support PCIe. In fact even after reading this news I still ordered my card today and I feel good about only spending 200 for the almost best.

Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[13Echo]

I lucked out into getting a Radeon 9500 PRO for a mere $100 a few months ago. It plays all of the latest games with the settings maxed, and even runs very niceley on Linux.

By the time AGP has depreciated, it will be a great time to upgrade. For now, my new KT600 based board will do the job fine for the current line of AGP cards. All together, the upgrade, with new CPU and RAM, only ran me about $400-$500 dollars. I can't imagine paying that amount for a videocard alone, since the performance increase over the 9500 PRO (which I can hack to operate as a 9700) is very minimal. Besides... Who needs anything better when all of the current games play perfectly with the settings maxed out? If I upgrade every 2-3 years with the best $100-$150 card I can find, the $500 card users that need to have the "best toys on the block" have no real edge over anyone else... And I end up saving $700+ over what they spent.

Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't spend $400+ on a video card for the performance you'll get on a game in a year or two. Spend $200 on a 9700 Pro (or whatever your pref.) for the games you play now. Then spend another $200 in a couple of years for whatever card you need to run your games. Buying top of the line means paying top dollar.

But I bought the top of the line video card I could get in November so I could run Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. I'm afraid by the time they come out my video card will be obsolete!

Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anand's site often recommends (for users with a budget, anyway) that people buy stuff that will run the software(games) they want to run now. I agree and make this recommendation often.

You're talking to the wrong crowd. Anyone who's going to follow your advice already knows it... everyone else is too busy starring at their shiny new toy.

Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

your model basically asks the buyer to spend the same amount of money over the course of 3-4 years but requires a (albeit simple) hardware upgrade.

Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo!

[viper66]

Try increasing your gaming resolutions, or using antialiasing. A 9500 pro can not play every game with the details maxed at 1600x1200, or even 1280x960. With antialiasing, drop it down another resolution or two.

Nature of the beast

[Bronz]

"This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards."

Come again? Why do people consider than advances in technology retroactively negate past purchases? If you bought a nice AGP card yesterday, it will continue to be a nice AGP card today.

Re:Nature of the beast

[betelgeuse-4]

Remember that there are people who always want the lastest technology, and feel that something more advanced on the market makes what they have useless.

I'm not one of these people, I think my Pentium 90 system is suitably advanced technology when it comes to the world of servers for small LANs.

Re:Nature of the beast

[JayJay.br]

Yeah, but not tomorrow!

We all know that 48hrs is enough to obsolete any hardware.

Re:Nature of the beast

[Apreche]

exactly my thought. My first pc was a Pentium /// 450mhz with a TNT2 from 5 years ago. Recently I bought all new and got an AMD XP 2500+ with a GeForce FX5900. I expect that 5 years from now I will need a new pc. I don't care if video cards change interface next year, because I wont be needing new stuff for 4 more.

Re:Nature of the beast

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for letting us know. Enjoy the coming 4 years.

Re:Nature of the beast

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate this argument because it skews the definition of obsolete. By this definition, everything you now have will be obsolete for the next 5 years. If you think of the real meaning of the word, you'd realize that if something is still usable for what you are trying to do, it is not obsolete. It may be dated, it may not perform like the newest consumer available item, but it is not obsolete.

Re:Nature of the beast

[just fiddling around]

Well, considering the extenuating pace at which video card rendering power advances, if you bought a nice video card yesterday, it will probably be an underpowered piece of crap tomorrow...

Because of that, I have invested in a game console for all my video-intensive gaming needs. No video card is good enough for a new game that came out 2 years after it hit the market, but if a console is scrapped after 2 years, it is a major failure for the company that produced it.

Re:Nature of the beast

[Anonymous Coward]

Your first computer was a PIII? What, are you like 10 years old?

Re:Nature of the beast

[geekoid]

but tomorrow, it will be crap.

heh. that the nature of the beast.

For those of you like me...

[zegebbers]

who know nothing about this so called PCI Express x16, check out these useful sites... True, they're not in english, but as if it's any harder to read than xbitlabs and anandtech ;-) .

Re:For those of you like me...

[wowbagger]

In a nutshell:

PCI, AGP, and ISA are all parallel systems - you have a wire for each data bit.

PCI express uses a VERY high-speed serial bus to carry the data. How high speed? One serial channel will carry more data than a standard 64 bit 66MHz PCI bus.

The advantages to a serial system are:

1. No timing skew. With a high speed parallel bus, you have to insure that all the data paths are the same electrical length, or else some bits get to the card before other bits, and you have to reduce the clock rate to prevent errors. With a serial system you have far fewer lines to worry about.
2. Simpler board design. When you are dealing with a 64 bit data bus, 64 bit address bus, plus control lines, the board design gets a bit complex. With a serial system, you have less than ten lines per channel - a much simpler board layout.
3. Serial systems usually use a MUCH lower signaling voltage, resulting in MUCH lower EMI and on-board noise.
4. PCI express allows you to gang serial channels for more bandwidth. Video card saturating one channel? Use two.
5. Unlike AGP, PCI express is a bus - so each device can busmaster to system memory or to other cards as needed. This helps you when your video card wants to store textures in system RAM rather than on-card. Imagine how much fun John Carmack could have with a video card that can support 1G of textures.
6. It is far easier to design disconnects for a serial bus, thus allowing for PCI hotswap. In fact, the PC card group is working on a new standard for PC cards (nee PCMCIA) that brings 2 PCI-X channels to card - Cardbus on steroids.
7. It is possible to route a PCI-express channel out of the computer case to an external chassis. While this is of limited use to the usual computer user, for guys like me it is a boon to be able to have an external chassis that looks just like it is on the main system bus, because it IS.

PCI express *could* allow you to have a computer that has bays that accept anything - hard disk, video card, extra CPU, NIC, whatever, and plug them it without restarting (unless you are running Windows (cheap shot, as I beleive MS is working on fixing that)). It will allow your video card to REALLY have fast access to system RAM, and especially in 64 bit systems, that could be a LOT of system RAM.

Good stuff - I can hardly wait 'til it becomes commonly accepted.

Re:For those of you like me...

[liquidsin]

4.
# PCI express allows you to gang serial channels for more bandwidth. Video card saturating one channel? Use two.

Now, I'm no EE, but if you're trying to simplify the bus by making it serial instead of parallel, aren't you just reintroducing all of the problems by parallelizing it again? And now making it worse by having to sync the timing on two seperate buses? Just curious, if someone could explain...

Re:For those of you like me...

[Anonymous Coward]

just a stupid question, why don't they make parallel serial connections?

4 serial lines connecting the same 2 devices should be able to go up to 4 times as fast, right?

Re:For those of you like me...

[imsabbel]

Actually, the single bandwith of one link isnt that big. See the story, they use 16Links for Graphics.

But hypertransport is the same in that reagard. Its MUCH easier to run x links a y bits than one link with x*y bits.
For Example, you have your own clock line for every link, so there is no need for temporal coherence between the links. At Ghz-speeds in copper on a pcb, a few millimeters lenght difference would be enough to kill your signal. But of course you cant put the lines to close to each other because of crosstalk, ect.
With multiple seriel busses, you just give every link a big enough fifo at each end and no problems...

Re:For those of you like me...

[randyest]

No, using multiple PCI-Express serial links (lanes) doesn't introduce any of the complexity of parallel buses because each lane is still independent -- you don't have to worry about bit skew between them, and you don't have to "sync the timing" of the two lanes in any way (the upper layers of the protocol handle this).

Re:For those of you like me...

[eXtro]

PCI-X is 64 bits wide, keeping the phase relationship between the data bits and clocks is challenging - and you have to do it. There's no 1-bit wide PCI-X.

PCI express is a serial link, but if you need to you can gang together a couple of serial links for better aggregate bandwidth. Keeping two or four links with the proper relationship is much easier than keeping 32 or 64.

PCI express would have most of the difficult work done inside of the PCI express core. The serializer/deserializer will be painful but you only design it once and replicate it after that. The core of the chip still operates in parallel. So data leaving the core will have to be serialized, transmitted across the channel and received by a deserializer which translates the serial data back to parallel.

There are a lot of areas to introduce skew in parallel data. There's skew on the ASIC, skew on the PC board and skew in the cable. In addition parallel data going across a cable tends to capacitively couple at both the near and far end. There is also jitter from the PLL, on chip voltage variation etc.

If you crunch the numbers it should come in as a slightly better timing budget with a serial link at the data rates than you would have with a parallel link.

Re:For those of you like me...

[Greger47]

And PCIx16 is 16 of those serial busses used in parallel...

So how come they invent and thath that fantastic serial fearure just to chuck it out the door and make it into a parallel bus again?

/greger

Re:For those of you like me...

[mczak]

I'll agree with most of your points, but this one is wrong:

PCI express uses a VERY high-speed serial bus to carry the data. How high speed? One serial channel will carry more data than a standard 64 bit 66MHz PCI bus.

PCI 64bit 66Mhz has a transfer rate of 533MB/s (in either direction, but not simultaneously), PCI Express 1x has 250MB/s (in both directions simultaneously, so "combined" bandwidth of 500MB/s). No matter how you look at it, the bandwidth of PCI-Express 1x is not more than PCI 64bit/66Mhz - if you have only traffic in one direction, it's slightly less than half, if you have traffic in both directions it's almost the same (and PCI-Express could be faster maybe because of possibly lower overhead).
Of course, no desktop board today has 64bit/66Mhz PCI bus, all are limited to 32bit/33Mhz which is definitely slower than PCI-E...

Re:For those of you like me...

[CTachyon]

As others mentioned, each serial line is independently clocked, so it doesn't matter if the timing gets out of sync. Theoretically, they could even run at different speeds (but practically speaking there'd be no reason to).

Re:For those of you like me...

[Anonymous Coward]

The advantages to a serial system are:

5. Unlike AGP, PCI express is a bus....

So much for attention span...

Re:For those of you like me...

[Wesley Felter]

PCI Express isn't a bus; it's a point-to-point connection. And both AGP and PCI Express support DMA, so I'm not sure what your point was.

Re:For those of you like me...

[ShadowDawn]

Serial busses are all the rage now-a-days. I remember when my first couple of serial devices...

The good 'ol Commodore 1541 Serial Floppy Drive, man, let me tell you, that thing was a SPEED demon.

I was much more productive back in those days... That is where I learned the art of modern multi-tasking.

load "myfavgame",8,1

Kids now-a-days just click on an icon and the play the game, I say "PFFT!!"

After you initiated the load command on the serial 1541, you could go take a shower, eat some breakfast, catch the morning news and come back your just finished loading game.

That my friends is what I call multi-tasking....

Kids today or just plain lazy. :)

Re:For those of you like me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great info, interesting stuff. I for one will be glad to see AGP go away, because it was never that well conceived in the first place, IMHO.

Unlike AGP, PCI express is a bus - so each device can busmaster to system memory or to other cards as needed. This helps you when your video card wants to store textures in system RAM rather than on-card. Imagine how much fun John Carmack could have with a video card that can support 1G of textures.

Ehh, well, wasn't this (main memory as texture memory) the original intent behind AGP in the first place? And it turned out to be a not-so-great idea for two reasons. First, a video card's insatiable need for memory bandwidth quickly outstripped the capacity of even the AGP system - something that's going to happen to any system as you crank the resolution and polygon count up. And second, memory prices fell, so it's simpler, and pretty cheap, to populate the video card itself with loads of fast RAM, accessed through purpose-built mega-speed interfaces. When playing PC games today, one tries to set up display rez, texture sizes, etc. such that AGP texturing doesn't happen, because it causes upsetting hiccups (at best) or dramatic slide-show like slowdowns (at worst) in the frame rate. So this fancy interface to the video card is mostly wasted, because it hasn't a prayer of keeping up with the pace of the action right on the card.

Today's mainstream cards have 128MB and 256MB or RAM right on the card. It won't be that long before 1GB of native video RAM doesn't seem too outlandish. And it's ultimately a better solution.

Re:For those of you like me...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

" and plug them it without restarting (unless you are running Windows (cheap shot, as I beleive MS is working on fixing that))."

Very cheap shot, as Windows 2000 supported hotwswap PCI *far* before Linux. Try this: Hibernate (suspend to disk) a Windows 2000, 2003, or XP system, add a PCI card, remove a PCI card, and turn it back on.

Re:For those of you like me...

[Anonymous Coward]

REMOVE a PCI Card while the computer is on?! Hibernated or not, won't that blow your system to smithereens? How about the risk of being shocked??

That's insane...

Re:For those of you like me...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. You kicked his ass.

Re:For those of you like me...

[Y0tsuya]

As far as I can tell, when in hibernation all DRAM is swapped to HDD and all system power is turned off. That's why the DRAM needs to be swapped back from disk when it wakes up. So no electrical shock here. Whether the OS device table is still in one piece after removing the PCI card is another question. Never tried it.

Re:For those of you like me...

[anto]

That is the point of hot-swap PCI - tell the OS that you want to remove a card - the OS tells the card to go to sleep & probably does interesting things to the bus - then you yank the card & everyone is happy. You don't see this on cheap-o PC systems but it does tuen up in really high end gear (like telco equipment etc)

Re:For those of you like me...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't see this on cheap-o PC systems but it does tuen up in really high end gear (like telco equipment etc)

Laptops too - Cardbus slots are basically PCI with hotplugging.

Re:For those of you like me...

[wowbagger]

PCI express is a bus, logically - any board can access any portion of the shared address space, and so in that way it is a "bus" - OK, technically a fully connected star configuration, but in trying to keep it simple for the majority of /.'ers who would not know what a "fully connected star configuration" is, I used the common terminology.

And as for AGP supporting DMA - yes, AGP cards can do OK accessing system memory IN THE AGP aperture, but not very well - which is why we are seeing cards with the enormous texture RAM onboard, because going off-card to access system RAM over AGP is very slow.

Re:For those of you like me...

[Anonymous Coward]

holy shit...how did you get moded +5 informative when your links are all non english...
That is so fucking funny...
Mods really DON'T read..
HAHAH..
bye..

Re:For those of you like me...

[Anonymous Coward]

you dumbfuck. Hibernate removes ALL power to the system. You can pull the plug and come back in a few hours plug it in and turn it on and it'll all be just like it was before you hibernated. Standby on the otherhand just put's the CPU to sleep and turns off some fans/hard disk drives

Um, no

[thetzar]

JohnQ, are you some kind of idiot? If you READ the article, you'd see that ATI is releasing dual chipsets of identical performance, one each for PCIe and AGP.

Re:Um, no

[hoser-xpat]

Yes, you're correct that most high end cards these days are dual head. But a fast non-AGP option opens up the option of building low cost CAVE VR environments (4+ screens). I've been personally waiting for this for quite some time, and I'm hoping NVidia follows suit soon!

Re:Um, no

[Dr. Evil]

Hey, remember where you are. This is Slashdot. Of course the author, the poster, nor the readers actually read the article!

The article is just to pad space for more slashboxes.

Re:Um, no

[SirDaShadow]

Now that you mention it...given the same chipset and specs for a specific card:

1) What are the advantages of PCI(normal 32bit)x66mhz vs AGP?

2) AGP vs PCI-Express?

Because I have seen that the advantage from PCI->AGP is not really THAT great!

Re:Um, no

[Performer Guy]

The difference is huge but it depends on the software to an extent. AGP has much more bandwidth, but it can also DMA data from memory straight to the card freeing the CPU for other stuff. In addition newer AGP cards can send command data to the card while data is being transfered.

If you don't see much difference you may not have certain features enabled. Make sure you enable fast writes and that your AGP aperture is large. You may be experiencing a performance impact if this is too small due to memory copies and/or PCI mode transfers to the card.

Re:Um, no

[Performer Guy]

PCI Express has more bandwidth the fastest AGP but it also makes it easier to use, much more memory can be mapped for DMA with a linear model rather that the GART AGP aperture.

Since it's a serial bus it should be simpler & cheaper for mobo makers to implement with fewer wires on the board.

It don't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Joe public will upgrade and buy, over time.
Nature of the beast, if you are not making the change you will change.

Perfect timing....

[B5_geek]

This seems like a perfect upgrade symphony. Reminds me a lot of the Win95 launch.

PCI-Ex
Win64
iSCSI

A nice trio of technologies that sound like they are maturing together.

Damn, and I just got my Visa paid-off from christmas.

=)

Re:Perfect timing....

[Anonymous Coward]

> PCI-Ex

Please don't call it that. There's enough confusion already between PCI-X and PCI-Express.

2x fill rate?

[DarkHelmet]

To quote the Anandtech article:

The R420/423 chips will offer twice the pixel fill rate and vertex throughput of the R350 core, as well as increases in memory bandwidth.

Okay, twice the pixel fill rate? Supposing it's an 8x pipeline just like the r350, and is 500mhz where does 2x fill rate come in? The R350 is NOT 250mhz.

I'm thinking this will do roughly 25% faster than the fastest card out there, maybe 50% in some applications. Anything more will really surprise me.

Re:2x fill rate?

[araemo]

Mhz isn't everything.

Refinements to the design(Or possibly a completely different internal architecture) could even double the fill rate without ANY clock speed increase...

That said, pixel fill rate doesn't mean much, and as games start using more and more pixel and shader programs, you'll eventually want shader benchmarks and won't care about fill rate.

Re:2x fill rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh, pixel shaders directly consume fillrate. Its mostly a function of how many textures you are reading from plus how long your pixel shader program is (and on what hardware you are running the program on). The graphics pipeline is very lopsided, usually you are CPU bound first until some distant date in the future when CPUs are 4-10x faster, then fillbound, and then transform bound last (if at all, ever).

People will still use their AGP cards

[queen of everything]

I think it bodes fine with the poeple who just bought top of the line vid cards. They aren't crap yet. They'll still display your games just fine. I think people will continue to use them until they no longer do the job they were purchased for. And then at that point they will go out and buy the new PCIe's. (and most likely a new motherboard, processor, memory...the whole deal) The rest of your system has to be able to keep up with each component inside.

Why?

[ValourX]

I can't help but think that this is just a way of keeping hardware development going at ATI. Video cards don't need to be faster than they already are in the midrange and top end. It looks to me like an excuse to sell something different... much like the recent Adobe and Macromedia "upgrades."

-Jem

Re:Why?

[dave420-2]

Try putting two AGP graphics cards into your computer :)

This is the next evolution in peripherals. Every slot in your PC will be able to take every sort of device you can think of, including the latest and fastest video card(s). Like the old PCI-only days, but with better-than-AGP speed, across the board.

Re:Why?

[3Suns]

> Video cards don't need to be faster than they
> already are in the midrange and top end.

That's what they said when 3Dfx built the Voodoo2 back when Quake2's graphics blew everyone away. There will ALWAYS be room at the top. I want a graphics solution that can render full-scene real-time anti-aliased anisotropically-filtered photo-quality scenes across three high-res displays. Even the best cards out there would flat-out choke.

That said, what I think better software needs to be written to take advantage of the current hardware. When I see how beautiful graphics look in many console games, I can't help but wonder why PC games don't look as good on average, even with much studlier hardware. PC games need to render at higher framerates and resolution to look good on a computer monitor, and developers need to code to non-standardized systems. I think the latter of these issues causes developers to not polish and tweak the look and feel of their games as well as on a console. Better, more generic, and more widely-available game engines for the PC will have more impact on graphics in the near-term than will graphics hardware.

Re:Why?

[tlahoda]

I don't want to put 2 agp cards in my computer. Even if I had 2 agp slots. Manufacturers are always seeming to think that 1 card is enough for everyone, so those of us that want/need multiple cards are usually screwed. It is pretty hard to find 2 pci graphics cards that will play nicely together and even if there were 2 agp slots I doubt it would be any easier to find 2 agp cards that would play together nicely. Fortunately I've found that an ati radeon multihead card in the agp slot works nicely with an nvidia geforce 4 in a pci slot. This gives me 3 monitors and makes life even better :)

Re:Why?

[Radius9]

Being a game developer, I can tell you exactly why we can't generally take advantage of the newest hardware. For one, the hardware on consoles is a static target. One user's Playstation 2 is the same as any other user's Playstation 2. Making a game take advantage of the hardware is much easier on consoles because of that. Even on consoles, you'll notice from one generation of software to the next, running on the same hardware, you'll notice an improvement in graphics. This is basically the developers learning new tricks and creating new tools, etc. to take advantage of the consoles. On a PC, you are trying to support a wide variety of machines, which means that the game itself can't depend on things like vertex and pixel shaders, or, if it does, I have to potentially cut out all the people without shader support on their graphics hardware. In addition, the PC hardware is a moving target. A game takes anywhere from 1-3 years to finish on average. That means that I have to guess what the hardware is going to look like in 1-3 years, then code my game in such a way that it can be easily updated to take advantage of those features once the new hardware is available. This way, at the end of my development cycle I can go in and make it work with the latest and bestest hardware. Quite a difficult task.

Re:Why?

[prefect42]

That would be lovely if it was true, but I think you'll find you're dreaming. Graphics cards will require the 16x PCIe, and you'll find yourself with only one of those in your average system, the remaineder being 1x...

Re:Why?

[liquidsin]

Until someone comes up with a new faster bus that would be great just for graphics, and we get boards with PCE-G, or some other catchy moniker. Remember the pre-PCI days of ISA, and VESA just for graphics? Then PCI was good enough for everything for a while, but then we got AGP. I'm sure we'll end up seeing the same thing here...

Re:Why?

[tlahoda]

oh yeah, those are 3 19" monitors so life is pretty good.

Re:Why?

[3Suns]

What I think is starting to happen (and please correct me if I'm off target) is that companies like Epic, Valve, and Id are making more and more money from licensing their game engines. Certain companies, like Havok, are already around that focus entirely on game engines or game engine components. At some point some of these engines will become ubiquitous, and the companies that develop them will keep them constantly up to date with the latest hardware. Game developers will only have to worry about features of a particular engine, rather than specifics and generalities of the hardware. This is what I mean when I say that advances in software generality will become more important than hardware advances.

Re:Why?

[Deliveranc3]

TV has built in anti aliasing in it's display and low resolution. Also try sitting accross the room from your monitor.

Re:Why?

[wwvuillemot]

That said, what I think better software needs to be written to take advantage of the current hardware. When I see how beautiful graphics look in many console games, I can't help but wonder why PC games don't look as good on average, even with much studlier hardware.

Whilst I will not add the the previous replier, their point that the hardware is a static target is very valid.

However, another issue of playing on console (e.g. NSTC-standard TV) is that it is equivalent to playing on a PC dumped down to a resolution of 427 by 525 or 224,175 pixels per framed and interlaced to boot)! Your typical PC gamer plays a minimum 800 by 600, or about double the pixels per frame! (We can safely assume the same pixel bit depth.) And if console output interlaces the image then PC's are doing twice the work for the same frame -- but this isn't really fair since PC games sometimes have the option for interlace'd images...but it seems to be a passing fad from a few years back. When I take this into considertion I think PC games show a lot of great programming to get the performance that they do.

Not to say that more cannot be done -- but considering the pace of CPUs, GPUs, et al., PC game makers have a very fast moving target. And you are starting to see better optimized games for XBox and PS 2 in large part the developers are becoming more experienced with the fixed HW and thus know how/where to optimize.

Re:Why?

[The Ego]

As another poster stated, this in unlikely to happen.

High-performance graphic cards will require a x16 slot, and most motherboards will only provide one x16, multiple x1 and maybe a couple of x4.

Moreover the PCI-Express specs define power limits. All the Gfx vendors requested (and got) amazingly high power limits for graphic slots. Having two Gfx boards working at the limit would blow past the cooling abilities of most cases. While it will be possible for a PC manufacturer to provide multiple such slots, this will not happen in the value segment and may only be offered at a high cost premium (if at all).

What I am hoping for is for "secondary" cards working from a 4x slot, with limited performance and limited consumption. I could use a (or two) secondary display(s) while using flight simulators (e.g., for auxiliary panels or peripheral vision).

Note also that the PCI-SIG is close to making a decision on "second generation signaling rate". The debate is between 5Gb/s/lane (ie 2 times Gen I) or 6.25Gb/s/lane. A Gen-II 4x slot would provide enough bandwidth to feed a current high-end card.

Why doesn't it bode well????

[NiteHaqr]

Manufacturers will continue to put AGP slots on mother-boards for the next while - as far as I can tell you will be able to plug a PEG gfx card into ANY PEG slot on your board

This just takes us back to the old PCI/AGP days.

No need to spread FUD on the GFX card market - anyone who just paid top dollar will be able to use their top dollar car din their new top dollar PEG capable board for the forseeable future.

What this does herald is the next generation of GFX cards that are coming, but I dont think there
will be much difference between PEG and AGP GFX cards for a while - at least not before the shine on the new FX5950 and 9800's has long worn off.

Standard Slashdot sensationalism (but you gotta love it)

Re:Why doesn't it bode well????

[vanillacoke]

I am going to love seeing video cards on the last slot of computers and people asking me "vanillacoke [well they wont call me that they just call me...never mind, forget it] how come my 500 dollar video card is so slow" And I'll say "You put your 16x PCIE card in a 1x slot" and they'll say "oh" and they'll ask me to fix their internet (because AOL just came out with Ten point oh Supercharged) then later on ill mock them on Slashdot.

And thus, the circle of life is completed.

Re:Why doesn't it bode well????

[senorpyro]

Think again - both Intel and SIS have removed AGP support from ALL of their upcoming chipsets - Via is the only p4 chipset manufacturer with both AGP and PCI-Express support for their upcoming chipse. So if you still want to use you're shiny new 9800xt on the next motherboard you buy, you better make sure it's a via chipset p4 board, or an AMD board.

Re:Why doesn't it bode well????

[Slack3r78]

I know you were joking, but just so you can sleep easier at night, all the pictures I've seen have shown 16x PCIe slots being physically larger than 1x PCIe slots. Not saying that wouldn't stop some of our more ingenious computer "experts" from "making it fit" but it should at least make things more difficult for them. ;)

Re:Why doesn't it bode well????

[JDWTopGuy]

Do not FUD the AGP, PCI will be DOA, so STFU.

IANAL, YMMV, HAND.

Re:Why doesn't it bode well????

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I can tell you will be able to plug a PEG gfx card into ANY PEG slot on your board

Depends on what the other slots are.

The prototype boards for BTX format show only one x16 slot in the system, and the rest of the slots were x1, plus I think one "legacy" PCI card. If the card is designed for x16, you need an x16 slot to plug into it.

Re:Why doesn't it bode well????

[thefultonhow]

You're confusing PCI-Express x1 (normal peripherals such as NICs, sound cards, RAID controllers, etc.) and PCI-Express x16 (graphics cards only). Although card manufacturers will doubtless produce x1 graphics cards (just like some GeForce2 MXs, GeForce FX 5200s, and ATI Radeon 9000s are PCI designs at this point), most new GPUs (such as the R423 mentioned here) will be designed for and will run only in x16 slots.

Then you get into chipset design -- all PCI-Express chipsets will include only one x16 slot, and the currently pending ones will not include AGP slots. One example of this is Intel's Grantsdale chipset, which includes support for one x16 slot, three x1 slots, and a couple more regular PCI slots. So in summary, if you want to get a state-of-the-art motherboard, you'll also have to upgrade your graphics card.

With that said, a site I saw on the BTX formfactor showed a computer with a PCI-Express x16 to AGP adaptor -- but I doubt that will make it to production; it was probably just because no PCI-Express cards are available at the moment and they needed a stopgap solution for their demo box.

Drivers

[rjelks]

I'd like to see Linux drivers in the "roadmap". I still can't get 3d acceleration and tv-in on my 8500 card. The newer gen. cards look great, but how long till the drivers are available for them? By the way, this is a good open source project for drivers (ATI) here.

Re:Drivers

[NiteHaqr]

Should have gone NVIDIA then my friend.

Ok so you got to sell your soul and taint your kernel (big deal) but I got GLXGears clocking up 3500 fps (well thats what it says) on my Ti4200/XP2000 set up and I even play my Playstation 2 on my monitor via the TV-in

This is why my next card will be an Nvidia (5950 Ultra, buying next week), because I dont want to gamble on ATI releasing drivers in the next year or so (which is probably the timescale that the 5950 will be replaced from the Wintendo XP gaming box).

Re:Drivers

[parksie]

Linux 2.6 + XFree86 4.3

Enable the "radeon" DRI driver in the kernel, use "radeon" in your XF86Config, and all is good. If you want to stick with 2.4, *disable* all DRI support in-kernel, and grab the DRI project R200 drivers.

Re:Drivers

[13Echo]

The 8500 cores are pretty well supported with the DRI and Gatos drivers. ATI's proprietary drivers support the newer cores. I am getting 3000+ FPS in GLXGEARS with my 9500 PRO and the drivers still aren't optimized. I expect that, when they improve the drivers a bit more, that they will perform much better. ATI mentioned that they intend to update their drivers for Linux at least every two months.

They won't ever be supporting the older cores though, since the DRI drivers are quite sufficient. ATI has given programming documentation to the DRI project for this task. In most respects, the DRI drivers work pretty well. I am using them with some of my ATI cards at work.

PCI-E about features

[Anonymous Coward]

PCI-E is not about more performance. In fact, a well designed PCI-E card will not show any real deficit in performance vs. an AGP one, provided all other variables are identical.

PCI-E is about making the video processor useful for more than just dumping graphics data. Modern graphics chips are essentially giant geometry calculators, and could be used for far more than they currently are. Due to the fact that PCI-E allows data to be communicated back to the system after it has been processed on the card, this opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. Many 'glitches' in current rendering techniques should dissapear now that the card can relay what the output looks like back to the game driver, allowing it to make on the fly corrections to the image.

PCI-E is all about features, not performance. It should perform like any other interface really, maybe a couple percent faster due to the increased bandwidth, but nothing major. I doubt games will truly begin to take advantage of it for a couple years. Upgrading right now to get PCI-E is ridiculous, however buying a top of the line AGP card at this juncture is equally ridiculous...

Re:PCI-E about features

[LankyBoycie]

Nope - AGP can go both ways too, this is not a new feature on PCI-Express. PCI-Express is all about replacing PCI and AGP with a common interface.

Using the host processor "to make on the fly corrections to the image" would be madness as you would have to transfer the whole frame buffer off the GFX card to host mem and then back again. An incredible waste of bandwidth when you can do pretty much most things with pixel shaders anyway, without the round trip.

Re:PCI-E about features

[wfberg]

Using the host processor "to make on the fly corrections to the image" would be madness as you would have to transfer the whole frame buffer off the GFX card to host mem and then back again. An incredible waste of bandwidth when you can do pretty much most things with pixel shaders anyway, without the round trip.

Even more ridiculous if you consider this; what would you check against? The host processor would then have to also render an image to compare the output of th gpu with, but rendering those images is exactly what the gpu is for in the first place!

Re:PCI-E about features

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Well, I assumed that AGP was supposed allow bi-directional data transfer. I suppose there are caveats somewhere.

buying a top of the line AGP card at this juncture is equally ridiculous...

Buying top-of-the-line is generally rediculous, period, unless you really do need it. It is best to wait six months after initial release for prices to come down esp. when a replacement comes out, and also for more polished drivers.

It really doesn't affect me, I'll buy what I need and what works for my current system because there's plenty of expansion potential left. There are some benefits to PCI-E but I have PCI 66/64 available which suits just fine for now.

Re:PCI-E about features

[rsmith-mac]

Nope - AGP can go both ways too, this is not a new feature on PCI-Express.

Technically you're right, but reality doesn't match design in this case. For just about all AGP and graphics cards implementations, pulling data from the AGP bus just isn't optimized. This is one of the reasons why ATI discontinued Firewire ports on its AIW cards past the 8500.

Re:PCI-E about features

[Forkenhoppen]

Might be useful for streaming something real-time 3D generated over a network.

Re:PCI-E about features

[jackbird]

An incredible waste of bandwidth when you can do pretty much most things with pixel shaders anyway, without the round trip.

Offline 3D rendering. Or anything else involving heavy vector math. 3D animators are salivating over being able to someday throw a whole bunch of these in the system to spit out frames faster.

You need access to lots and lots of memory to handle large amounts of geometry, render-time displacement triangles, huge textures, and enormous raytracing acceleration trees, so pixel/geometry shaders on the card won't cut it (not to mention you need better/faster antialiasing than the card provides built-in for offline rendering).

The bottleneck has always been the CPU in 3D rendering, while this amazing specialized chip was sitting a few inches away on the vid card twiddling its thumbs. Soon, we'll be able to use that chip, and maybe a couple dozen of its siblings, to dramatically decrease wait times for renders.

Re:PCI-E about features

[HD Webdev]

Upgrading right now to get PCI-E is ridiculous, however buying a top of the line AGP card at this juncture is equally ridiculous... I don't think purchasing a top quality AGP card is rediculous at all.

I generally get 2 years worth of use out of them. That comes to about $16 a month to have a card that can handle just about anything thrown at it at a high resolution.

I cut back on candy bars and Coca-Colas enough each month to pay for the card so the Bleeding-Edge AGP card is actually probably adding years onto my life!

Re:PCI-E about features

[drinkypoo]

Are you sure that wasn't just because most motherboards have onboard 1394 now (at least as an option) and a PCI 1394 card is only $30, with a cable?

Re:PCI-E about features

[Anonymous Coward]

3d Games over VNC Yea!!!!

Or maby just getting anything that used any sort of hardware accelerated video to work right over VNC, like IE!! (try it sometime just for kicks, scrolling the screen doesn't.)

Took them a while.

[NegativeK]

Having a single AGP bus has miffed me for a while. I've always wanted to stick my GF 4 and my GF FX in the same computer, but nooo.. It'll be nice when one can run more than two monitors and a very nice quality for a game. =D

Of course, I'll be able to achieve this in four years, when I have enough money.. =T

Three screen Quake3, anyone?

Re:Took them a while.

[vanillacoke]

Well the AGP 3.0 spec specifies multiple AGP cards, but its going to be overlooked and irrelevant now that you'll have 6 of the same slots to accidentally put the wrong video card in. Even now you can do Multiple screen quake, just that AGP card had to be capped so the PCI card could catc up.

Re:Took them a while.

[tlahoda]

um yep, got it

Huh?

[SuperBanana]

This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards

Let me get this straight, you're whining about obsolescence in the graphics card market? What planet or cave are you from? Leapfrogging happens...what, at least twice a year? New GPUs, different VRAM technology, faster PCI bus interfaces...it's old news, and by now anyone who buys a top of the line card should full well know it's going to be next week's "1" on the benchmark scales and worth half as much as it was when they bought it.

In fact, anyone who has bought -any- computer components in the last 30 years should know this, including the people who bought Apple Lisas(Helloooo, $6k down the toilet!)

By all means though, don't stop- if you did, the graphics card market would probably implode, as you're no doubt single-handedly funding the R&D efforts, and those of us buying 1-2 'generations' back want to keep seeing the not-so-latest, not-so-greatest drop in price ;-)

I just paid top-dollar for an AGP card...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and couldn't care less that it will be 'obsolete' in a year. If you base all your purchasing decisions on when the latest, greatest thing is coming out, you'll never buy anything.

Yeah, I'll wince when I see the same card I bought last week selling in three months for $100 less, but in the end I don't think I'll have a problem sleeping because of it.

AGP/PCI-X is not the most important thing...

[S3D]

For most games/3d-app AGP/PCI-X is not the most important thing. Number of pipelines, vertex processors and GPU clock is defining factor. AGP/PCI-X matter only for applications/games which are streaming (not loading by big blocks) a lot of data from the disk (for example detailed, not patterned, seamless terrain engine), and that is not common in modern games.

Re:AGP/PCI-X is not the most important thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we listen to you when you don't even know the difference between PCI-X and PCI Express? Retard.

Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[G4from128k]

As a non-gamer I am truly curious about the impact of these latest graphics cards for regular everyday use (spreadsheets, word processing, photoshop, etc.). Do these cards do anything to improve 2-D performance (scrolling, image manipulations, large screen displays?). I would assume that the inproved memory bandwidth helps a few percent, but that all the vertex shaders & pipelines mean little to 2-D office and graphics applications.

I'm just curious.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[S3D]

What matter for 2d is amount of videomemory and to less extent GPU clock.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[wwwrun]

Of course if you're running OS X or anticipating Longhorn then your whole desktop will be 3d-accelerated. Daft some might say, but why waste all that powerful hardware if it's there? And OS X does look extremely pretty.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[Cthefuture]

There haven't been any major 2D ehancements in years. You'll get a bit more bandwidth for pushing data around but my 6 year old 4MB video card does 2D just as fast as my 1 year old 64MB card.

The focus is 3D performance. 2D is limited by motherboard bus speeds and things like that.

A high-performance hardware vector based 2D card might be cool. You know, running display PDF in hardware or something.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[Jameth]

Well, someone wrote a compiler which lets regular apps use the Graphics Card for abitrary matrix mathematics, but you most likely won't end up using that very much.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[mst76]

Don't buy too much into hype, Quartz Extreme does NOT accelerate everything. Only the windows compositor is offloaded to the GPU, all Quartz2D operations are still handled by the CPU.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[rsmith-mac]

While this is true today, it's not going to be true for much longer. Frame-buffer issues aside, things like Apple's Quartz Extreme are quickly re-defining what 2D is and isn't, thanks to new features that are a combination of 2D/3D. Expose is a prime example, requiring upwards of 64MB of VRAM in extreme cases(high resolution, a dozen+ windows to compose), and a full 128MB(the quantity of memory high-end cards come with) if you do that with 2 displays. Longhorn is expected to bring a similar situation to the table, so what's been true for nearly the last decade, isn't going to be true for much longer.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[tlahoda]

The only real difference is the resolution and color you get. Newer cards give you a higher resolution at 24/32 bit color.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[LordKronos]

but why waste all that powerful hardware if it's there
Because when rendering 3D, the chip consumes more electricity causing it to run hotter, making the system more difficult to cool, causing variable speed fans run at a higher RPM, thus causing more noise. So now for the novelty of using 3D just because it's there doing nothing most of the time, my computer room is hotter, louder, and costing more money.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[wwwrun]

I wondered if anyone would bring that up. I agree 100%. A similar point has been made about things like SETI@home - all those "free" cpu cycles aren't really free, if you take the extra power consumption into account.

Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers?

[brucmack]

No, high-end cards are 256MB, and have been for a while.

Time is relative...

[twoslice]

If you bought a nice AGP card yesterday, it will continue to be a nice AGP card today.

I bought a really nice Vesa local bus video card at the time and today it blows chunks in my 486/66 Mhz system. I doubt I could get 2 fps in quake3.

Re:Time is relative...

[Shazow]

I bought a really nice Vesa local bus video card at the time and today it blows chunks in my 486/66 Mhz system.

The man specifically said yesterday, not a decade ago! Sheesh. =8-]

- shazow

Re:Time is relative...

[twoslice]

The man specifically said yesterday, not a decade ago! Sheesh. =8-]

sorry, I am a geologist, for me that was yesterday!

The sucks for just buying a 9800 pro..

[Anonymous Coward]

but beh, when the new cards'll come out,it'll be like OMG SECKS. And then of course,people like me will flock to stores to drool at boxes and possibly steal the empty ones to show my friends that I have one...when I really don't T_T Still sounds fun though :D

You were warned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody who rushed out and bought a new top-of-the-line AGP mainboard recently and is now pissed because their video card upgrade options are going to be somewhat limited has nobody but themselves to blame. Hardware review websites have been talking about the pending shift to PCI-Express for the past year. The same can be said of people who blindly buy stocks without doing due diligence. It's not entirely surprising that upcoming video card chipsets only support PCI-Express.

I'm not sure that this bodes quite as badly for those who just bought an AGP video card. AGP mainboards aren't going to disappear overnight so you'll still have new mainboard upgrade options for at least a year or two.

Re:You were warned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course one can still get AGP video cards inthe future. On can still buy PCI video cards. The only real issue is- Will you have to upgrade your video card when you upgrade your mobo? Maybe though I expect that if it is at all technically feasible to have both PCIx and AGP, then the mobo makers will put both interfaces on the board. After all, one could still get PCI and ISA slots or PC133 and DDR memory slots on mobos.

Re:You were warned...

[brucmack]

In fact, the opposite of what you are saying is true. The original posting erroneously states that ATI won't be making AGP cards, but they will be doing so throughout 2004. However, only the next chipsets from VIA will be supporting AGP; Intel and SIS are both dropping it for PCI Express. No word on NVidia yet.

So basically, the AGP cards will be out there, but next-gen mainboards won't have AGP slots.

Call me crazy...

[rqqrtnb]

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that the changes ATI is making with R4xx are much less drastic than what Nvidia is doing with NV4x. Nvidia is claiming 3X perfomance increase over NV3x, and up to 8X performance increase in Pixel Shader operations. Yeah, it's all theoretical at this point, but it's something to think about. Of course, if you compare R3xx to NV3x, it appears that ATI just had a better design than Nvidia, for the most part, so they didn't need to change as much.

Regardless of which chip you favor, it's shaping up to be an interesting battle come springtime! (Or more likely summer for those of use that don't get the very first cards direct from the manufacturers.) Can't wait! When these cards get released, I'll finally be able to afford a Radeon 9800XT. :)

Re:Call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at recent trends, nVidia makes a LOT of claims that are extrememly blown out of proportion. That might be why ATI's products have been superior in most respects for the last two years.

Re:Call me crazy...

[Deliveranc3]

No company that fell behind in graphics ever came back, say goodbye to Nvidia.

Re:Call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI fell behind Nvidia for awhile, but they came back.

Re:Call me crazy...

[smaug195]

Except for you know... ATI

Re:Call me crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo Crazy!

Re:Call me crazy...

[adna1]

It would be interesting to see the performance figures of NV4x vs R3xx with DOOM3 and HL2 (if it gets released!).

I got screwed

[superpulpsicle]

Yep I paid top dollars for my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB around the holidays. As soon as the new years came around, I saw the price of my card dip $100.

Now another month later I get this PCI Xpress news. Not to mention my card constantly get spotty graphics and overheat. I run open-cased too.

I am going back to Nvidia.

Re:I got screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

A = your fan died on the card... ATI has the absolute crappiest fans... replace it.

B = your system must suck in airflow.. get the pci card out of the slot next to it... you cant ignore that warning in the manual... you DID read the manual right? only poser/amatwurs dont read the manual or know what the hell they are doing....

Re:I got screwed

[lostchicken]

You do realize that running a system open-cased actually reduces cooling performance, right? Coses work through airflow, pulling air in one side of the case, flowing through the case and pushing out out the other. Put your case back on. Your CPU (and ears) will thank you.

Re:I got screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

but if i put the cover back on my system i wont get to enjoy the liquid neon lights and blinking IDE cables in my case, not to mention i wont be ables to fry eggs on the CPU heatsink anymore...

seriously though, KEEP YOUR CASE COVER ON!, and adding more fans to a case doesnt always help either, the more holes in your case, the worse your airflow is, with no cover one you have no airflow, a good, sealed case with proper airflow(CPU manufacurers putt airflow specs on their sites for a reason, not to mention, one of the big changes when we switched to ATX mobos were cpu placement for cooling since those new p200's were so darn hot) is better than an open case with a big, noisy fan sitting beside it( i know because i've had to fix this problem several dozen times)

Re:I got screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

unless you completely open your case and make one side of it a huge 20-inch or so box fan. :) You get an open case for prettyness AND great airflow.

Re:I got screwed

[freeweed]

First time graphics card buyer?

If you don't want to "get screwed", as you call it, never, ever, EVER pay "top dollar" for a video card. Ever. You will ALWAYS watch as your precious $500 card depreciates to $100 in a month or two.

Re:I got screwed

[Jonny Cat]

There is more to cooling a video card than just case fans. There are ram chips on the video card that may or may not be cooled. There is also the consideration of how they are cooled. If you stick a solid coper heat-sink on, its going to release a lot more heat than aluminum foil. Also, the fan on the video processor is very important (does your card even have a fan?). Radeon cards are notoriously bad when it comes to the stock cooling. For ideal cooling, check out the OTES system (id link it, but im a noob. you can find it with this item number at newegg.com N82E16814123127).

PCI-EXPRESS

[Sentosus]

So where are the demonstrations and technology notes showing that PCI-EXPRESS will enable us to do something with our video that was not possible with with say AGP 32X with a seperate power channel?

How do we know this is not just another marketing plot like Intel's statements that sockets were no longer able to advance and we are required to use slot packaging for CPUs?

I propose that this is a way to get you on your next MB upgrade. It comes with a PCI-Express slot instead of AGP, so you have to purchase a new video card to replace your Radeon 9800 that is plenty fast enough.

I have yet to see any real advantages to the consumers for changing to PCI-Express. A small change that is equal to a GPU and Memory speed boost is not enough. The update must be substantial and generation jumping.

Re:PCI-EXPRESS

[mongus]

According to my hardware engineer buddy who happens to be working on a PCI-Express implementation right now, 8X AGP pretty much maxes out that technology.

Graphics isn't the reason for the push to PCI-Express, it's just a nice side effect. Increased overall system bandwidth is the real reason to switch. With PCI 2.3 a single GB ethernet card can use up all your bandwidth where single a PCI-Express x1 link runs at 2.5 GB and each link runs on its own line, not interfering with other links.

Re:PCI-EXPRESS

[default luser]

How do we know this is not just another marketing plot like Intel's statements that sockets were no longer able to advance and we are required to use slot packaging for CPUs?

Now, come on, be reasonable. These things always have a root cause. The whole reason for the back-side bus was because (since the 486) the front-side bus could no longer easily scale with processor speed, and cache tied to the front-side bus meant decreasing returns with each speed grade.

On-package cache was tried and deemed a failure with the Pentium Pro, and since they couldn't yet fit a sizeable L2 cache on-die, the slot was the logical progression. Even AMD released the first Athlons on slots, obviously because the transistor budget for on-die cache just wasn't there.

Sure, it was less than two years between the introduction of the Pentium II, and the introduction of the Mendocino Celeron, but Intel could not wait that long. If Intel had waited to release the Pentium II in socket format, AMD would have kicked their ass in Socket 7 for those 2 years. Instead, Intel left Socket 7 for the little guys, and made a killing in the process.

AGP doesn't make sense

[TheRealMindChild]

AGP is conceptually broken. You can only have a single slot, which means if you want dual display, you have to either use a multi-head video card, which is extremely cost prohibitive in most cases, or use some obscure piece of addon hardware. Not to mention, if you want AGP on any sort of high end motherboard, be prepared to pay 3x what it is worth. (EX, the cheapest AGP equipped, dual opteron motherboard, with PCI-X slots hits $500 minimum, while a non AGP equipped motherboard of similar specs goes for $200: See pricewatch)

And what benefit do we get from this? Direct Access to system memory? This is slow... a lot slower then we were led to believe when this was first coming to market. So slow in fact that most serious users turn this feature off. And you would be sacrificing good system memory.

Anyway, my rant is done.

Re:AGP doesn't make sense

[Lumpy]

are you on drugs?

almost ALL Nvidia cards with VGA + DVI do dual head out of the box for $69.00 to $299.00 nothing expensive there... 3 head? easy, just buy a (gasp) PCI card to compliment it.

matrox makes 4-8 head cards that are sub $500.00 which are in the same price ballpark as the go-fast latest shiny video card that also have great 3d.

I suggest you learn about what you are complaining about before you publically complain about it... there are GOBS of goodies for super cheap multi-head.

Re:AGP doesn't make sense

[0123456]

"This is slow... a lot slower then we were led to believe when this was first coming to market."

LOL. AGP is now eight times faster than it was when it first came to market. The problem is that on-board GPU memory is more like forty times faster than it was when AGP first came to market... so there's no way that AGP access to system memory could keep up.

Re:AGP doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I run Xinerama with a GeForce AGP card and a GeForce2 MX PCI card. They don't even have to be the same driver, but it simplifies things. There's no limit to the number of additional PCI video cards that are supported.

Re:AGP doesn't make sense

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Uh, I thought most video cards now are multi-head.

I knew that dual opteron boards were expensive, but I thought the price was in PCI-X. One can get dual opteron with PCI & AGP for maybe less than half with PCI-X. The only dual opteron boards I see around $200 only have PCI-33/32 that I can tell.

Tyan Thunder K8W runs $450, and that has four memory channels, two PCI-X busses and AGP. Tyan Thunder K8S, very similar board but without AGP, runs $520. Both prices are at Newegg.

I actually think the prices are very fair considering what's packed into the boards, that is probably 2x to 3x the number of wires vs. the cheapie consumer boards, I mean, you get what you pay for. The cheapest dual opteron with PCI-X with or without AGP is $380.

A side note (not necessarily for parent poster): For those that haven't noticed, PCI-X is different from PCI-Express. PCI-X is an extension of PCI, PCI-Express is a totally different creature.

Re:AGP doesn't make sense

[evanbd]

You are aware of how PCI Express works, right?

You can have a varied number of channels; everything from 1x to 16x is being talked about, and I think the spec discusses as much as 32x. The only real use for a 16x slot for most things is the graphics card. Therefore, you won't be seeing multiple 16x slots on normal motherboards. So you'll still only be able to put a single high end card on a normal motherboard. Now, it's possible that server boards will be different and have multiple wide slots; however, my guess is that those will stop at 4x or maybe 8x slots.

I suppose it might be the case that you can plug a card intended for a 16x slot into a smaller one, but that somehow seems like wishful thinking. If you could, it would sacrifice a little theoretical performance, but I don't think that matters.

Three screens Quake3? Sure!

[Anonymous Coward]

There you go, little fella:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/archive_story/ap r2003/mi ll_pseries.cfm

Bah! kids these days...

[twoslice]

This just takes us back to the old PCI/AGP days.

Back in my day our monitors only displayed ascii characters in floresent green and had no graphics at all. In fact, we had to print ascii characters together just to look at Pr0n.

The more skilled hackers printed the ascii art on the corners of books so they could watch "flip" movies. Once an uber hacker printed the ascii image on every second page and achieved a 2-1 compression ratio which was unheard of at the time.

Re:Bah! kids these days...

[ArsonSmith]

I remeber the junior high days of using combonations of |, \, /, ==>, and 0 to make ascii porn on our brand new trs-80s in BASIC. Ohh the days of cheap easy programed porn.

0 0
/ |
==>|
\ |

never said I was good at it.

Re:Bah! kids these days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Proportional fonts don't help... throw it in a tag some time ;)

Re:KARMA WHORE ALERT!!!

[DarkHelmet]

Ever since he got his MCSE he thinks fill rate and bus speed are interchangeable.

I was thinking of going to college for an MCSE, and then I remembered that I already had a lobotomy.

Bandwidth Schmandwidth

[MagerValp]

As there's no measurable difference between AGP 2x, 4x, and 8x, why is everyone getting excited? I know PCI-X is going to be great for high end SCSI cards and the like, but as far as I know graphics cards aren't bandwidth limited.

Re:Bandwidth Schmandwidth

[Zed2K]

PCI-X is different from PCI Express.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID =1 087

Re:Bandwidth Schmandwidth

[kryptkpr]

You don't think there's a difference between AGP4x and AGP8x? I bought a Radeon 9600 Pro, and was stuck in an AGP4x SIS motherboard for a long time.. performance was "ok" in games, couldn't really go past 800x600 without slowdowns.

Got myself a nice new ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe (great board for the money.. loaded to the tits), with the NForce2 Chipset and AGP8x, my system now screams (exact same cpu, memory, video, just swapped mobo).. 1280x1024 in most games (max resolution my LCD will support).

In conclusion, bandwidth makes a difference. Especially when you're trying to crank the resolution.

Psssst hey dude!

[twoslice]

If you base all your purchasing decisions on when the latest, greatest thing is coming out, you'll never buy anything.

I have a Vesa local bus video card installed in my 486/66 - wanna buy it?

Re:I got screwed (yah, ya did)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell you didn't even buy the top of the line card! The 256mb edt uses DDR2 and the XT is the current top dog.

No if you were smart you would have tracked your self down a 9700 pro. Because the only thing separating the 9700 from the 9800 and the XT is 1's and zeros and no, my friend, not binary code...

You must of bought a Buit by ati too!

Um, no

[Tuirn]

Actually, many of the last gen cards from both ATI and NVidia can support 2 - 3 heads. You can find them fairly inexpensive if you look around a bit.

asortyl UT2K4 WILL BE BEGGING FOR MORE hagluhsulg

[J. Jacques]

Want longer, more intense gaming sessions? Try ATI's new line of graphics cards! Using our proven, all-natural herbal formula, you'll be mapping those bumps and shading those pixels like never before! Your computer won't know what hit her, but she'll never be able to get enough! hualw8erlasdhgl39a

Re:ATI's GPUs will be available in both PCIe and A

[Fulcrum of Evil]

How is this informative? You're just copying a couple of sentences from the anandtech story. At least attribute it so it isn't plaigarism.

More features and possibilities

[TasosF]

It's not so much about performance with PCI-E, it's about getting more features and use out of the video processors. PCI-E allows data to be communicated back to the system after it has been processed on the card so rendering glitches could possibly be fixed on the fly. This way PCI-E could lead to getting more usage from video processors.

Re:More features and possibilities

[randyest]

Are you the AC who posted almost exactly the same thing here? I ignored the AC post, despite the fact that it has (rather undeservedly) been modded up, but this is getting silly. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about ("rendering glitches could possibly be fixed on the fly" wtf?), so please stop spreading this nonsense.

PCI-E is about performance -- particularly higher bandwidth (scalable) and lower latency. I (and I suspsect you as well) have no idea what you're trying to say with regard to "allows data to be communicated back to the system after it has been processed on the card" (since both PCI and AGP are biderectional as well), but if there's a PCI-E "feature" to herald in addition to performance, it's the cost reduction allowed by the the use of high-speed differential serial links.

If you meant something else, please do explain.

Re:More features and possibilities

[MrBlue VT]

Hah, I was about to say the same thing. Kudos for posting it before I got a chance.

Gimme Vsync on the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Why hasn't this happened yet, I just don't get it. I'm sure this could be addressed in software, but maybe cards could/should have a vsync option for non 3d non accelerated stuff.

As a matter of fact, vsync should be on for everything by default. Why vsync is off with nvidia's linux drivers by default I'll never understand. It's for bench marks only. Period.

For you quaker's out there would want to take advantage of the jump exploits with certain magical fps numbers (104 I think), 76 is also one of those magic numbers and you can have that with vsync on and you system will more easily obtain that on a consistent basis.

Re:Gimme Vsync on the desktop

[prefect42]

Vsync isn't the same with 2D. For it to work, everything has to be properly double buffered, which it isn't. This isn't something that is [just] fixed by a change to the graphics drivers.

hardly matters

[prisoner]

Any game that might require this might be "announced" later this year but will be delayed until 2006...

Re:hardly matters

[SB5]

Duke Nukem Forever is due out this year... Ten bucks says it will be worse than Daikatana.

The big news here seems to be

[ahfoo]

that PCI-Express is really coming into the consumer channel in a big way in the near term.
That's great news and its about time. It makes me wonder why I never see GigE ethernet cards and switches in retails outlets though. I've seen GigE NICs as on-board features and I've seen them on-line and the prices look quite reasonable, but I've never seen them in a store yet.
But if boards are going for the big speed upgrade, then it's time for the home networks to step up a notch too.

Re:The big news here seems to be

[randyest]

That's great news and its about time.

Eh? "About time?" The spec was just completed late last year (and that's arguable, even, since we're still finding bugs and problems in the spec even this year). What is it that makes you imply that PCI-E is somehow late or even strongly needed in the consumer market?

But if boards are going for the big speed upgrade, then it's time for the home networks to step up a notch too.

Why, exactly, does network speed need to increase because system bus speed increases? Just because you can cram 2.5Gbps from CPU to your video card (per link) you suddenly need more than 100Mbps on your LAN? I don't get it.

Re:The big news here seems to be

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post reminds me of a sales drone I spoke with when I wanted to know why there was no GigE equipment in the joint.
He knowingly replied, "Oh, that's not a consumer technology. There's no need for it in a home setting."
I took him over to the buldging FastEthernet section and I said you know what you just said aplies to Fast Ethernet as well. Nobody needs 100Mbps in the home. You can stream MPEG over 10Mbps just fine. So, why are you selling this stuff that the consumer has no need for? And how about those 3Ghz CPUs? Better dump those too. And what are these 100+Gig hard drives for? Clearly there has been a big mistake. None of this stuff is necessary. Better send it all back.

Re:The big news here seems to be

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, exactly, does network speed need to increase because system bus speed increases?

You apparently don't have the mind of a gamer. Since the bus speed increase is to faciliate the next generation of graphics card, multi-user games are going to need as much bandwidth as possible. I have also been wondering where these gigabit ethernet card and switches are hiding.

Re:The big news here seems to be

[glsunder]

Right now, the _average_ home user is probably going to go for wireless over speed. They want to share their broadband connection with the kids, and maybe share a printer. There isn't a killer home network app that requires gigabit yet.

Re:The big news here seems to be

[drinkypoo]

Fry's is selling AirLink+ gigabit nics and switches. They're crappy, but they're cheap. I would guess that other large retail units like Fry's are probably selling the stuff too. My PC has gigabit onboard but it has nothing to have a conversation with at that rate.

Re:ATI's GPUs will be available in both PCIe and A

[Anonymous Coward]

It's informative in that it DIRECTLY contradicts the slashdot post which is completely incorrect, and therefore informs readers of that inaccuracy.

Buyer beware

[386spart]

As far as the feeling of having made a good deal goes, nothing that happens in the marketplace ever bodes well for the one who pays top dollar for anything. In the computer industry this lesson is learned, (or at least tought) faster than in most other industries.

PCI-Express == Vector CoProcessor

[BuildMonkey]

In my lab we're working on surgical simulation including organ physics, cutting, bleeding, etc. We need all the perfromance we can possibly get. The GPU is a monsterously fast parallel vector processing engine, and can be used for non-graphics computation. Asymmetric AGP bandwidth has prevented us from using the GPU as a coprocessor thus far: across the AGP bus you can push data down to the GPU through a firehose, back up through a straw.

AGP was a hack onto PCI. PCI-Express will give us the symmetric bandwidth we need. Yeah!

Re:PCI-Express == Vector CoProcessor

[Mr. Piddle]

Mmmm....six PCI-E slots = six-node desktop vector supercomputer.

Didn't someone predict that ray tracing will overtake current hardware-hack-rendering in real-time graphics (games, simulations)? With a fast CPU and these co-processors, perhaps this isn't too far away.

Depends on your use...

[Kjella]

I actually fail to see why it hurts those of us that did buy the last generation of cards. I needed a video card, this was the best out there (well best bang for the buck) so I bought one. How does this news affect something I did in the past and why would it affect my future? Anyone care to explain?

...but in case your multi-GHz processor will serve your needs just fine for several years, while your AGP card won't last you nearly as long, you'd wish you had an upgrade path, yes?

That being said, not being an FPS freak I've found that by the time I'd like to replace the GFX card, there's also lots of other new things on the mobo, new CPU socket, new memory interface/speeds, RAID / SATA / GB LAN / dual LAN / Firewire / USB2 / Bluetooth / WiFi / PCI-X / whatever to justify upgrading the whole machine.

Or, more to the trend, perhaps what you'd really like is to change form factor from ATX to a mirco-ATX or similar, get one of those mini-PCs.

But, if what you do is gaming, judging by the hours some people I know spend, getting the latest GFX card every six months be "reasonable". Just compare it to how much money other people dump into hobbies like cars or skiing or whatever. If you do it all the time, you want some seriously good equipment even though you'll never "recover" the investment.

And for those, it kinda sucks since they'll need a new computer to go with their spanking new GFX card. On the other hand, the AGP slot has been around for a long long time now, going from 1x->2x->4x->8x. Compared to pretty much every other interface, it's hardly surprising that it's time for some design changes.

Kjella

Re:Depends on your use...

[dmaxwell]

I upgraded recently and at some point the 4X AGP card currently in the system will be replaced with an 8X card and the 2.4Ghx P4 will be replaced with a 3.2Ghz unit. I don't intend to pay more $75 or so for both and those small mobo maxing out upgrades will buy another usable year or two for the system.

I'm basically looking ahead to the point where I can max out my current motherboard for a minimum amount of money.

This works if you aren't an upgrade wienie who has to be the first kid on your block with the latest ATI card.

Re:Depends on your use...

[Slime-dogg]

And for those, it kinda sucks since they'll need a new computer to go with their spanking new GFX card.

Doubtful. They'll probably have to drop ~$120 for a branch spanking new mobo that supports PCIX, but they won't have to replace any of the other components. I'm sure Nvidia, AMD, or VIA will chug out a mobo that has socket A + PCIX, and Intel will come out with a Socket 478 + PCIX board (that'll probably be the first one that hits the market).

Re:Depends on your use...

[Cincinnatus1984]

...but in case your multi-GHz processor will serve your needs just fine for several years, while your AGP card won't last you nearly as long, you'd wish you had an upgrade path, yes? This is ridiculous, if there is a market for newer AGP cards, then a company will produce them, just as PCI cards exist in small numbers now...

Re:Depends on your use...

[walt-sjc]

This is pretty close. Read my earlier comment though... I was (yesterday) looking for a new p3 mobo - it's amazing how hard it is to find these things now. And none of them support newer features or chipsets. You end up needing to replace the CPU and memory too in most cases.

But more to the issue at hand.

I just bought (2 weeks ago) a new system - built all from parts I picked out. When I picked out the graphics card, I found one that I know will last me for the life of the CPU / RAM / Mobo. I use one 21" monitor. It supports 2 and they can be analog or DVI, at wicked high resolutions. I'm thinking about doing some multimedia stuff. It support TV out.

I'm not a gamer, but if I was I'd probably be upgrading more than just my graphics card. If a game can take advantage of a better graphics card than what's currently available, then it also wants a faster processor, FSB, more cache, Ram, hard drive, etc. In other words, a pretty major upgrade.

ATI trade in

[ChupaThePirate]

i wonder if ATI will accept AGP cards for these PEG ones with their trade in program.

One can only hope

[IPFreely]

PCI-Ex
Win64

PCI Express is an Intel design bus. Win64 is an Athlon64 OS. It could be a while before we see AMD processors on PCI-Express boards.

Of course, the specs are out for HyperTransport 2.0, which is supposed to be compatible with PCI-Express. But we still need AMD to make a next generation processor with HT2. It hasn't been anounced, but 2H04 maybe.

Your future

[nurb432]

Problem is that if they only now support PCI-express, and you have an older agp style motherboard, you cant upgrade your card with out dumping most of your pc in the process...

Yes things do 'move on' but when what you have now is 100% functional and exceeds your needs, ( and isnt really 'old' ) it sux when no one supports it, purely out of greed..

Re:Your future

[stilwebm]

The idea is to force advancement for the few people who will do this. ATI knows, however, that most people will not take the upgrade video card only route if they are serious about performance. Instead, most people (most people != slashdot readers) just uprade their entire computer to get the maximum performance. The gamers will see PCI-X cards as a reason to jump to a PCI-X motherboard, advancing technology rather than catering to backwards compatability and getting behind later.

Re:Your future

[nurb432]

I think the thing that bugs me the most is the forced absolution, and slow movement to mandatory DRM.

Each 'upgrade' gets us one step closer to loosing control of the hardware....and making it harder to keep older stuff running so that we can do what we want with it.

The general buying public has no clue what is taking place.. though some are getting annoyed at the constant 'upgrade cycle' since it hits their pocketbook.

Re:Your future

[Anonymous Coward]

PCI-X? What the hell are you talking about? Lets try to stay on topic here- we are talking about PCI Express (or PCIe). The server bus standard PCI-X has nothing to do with this. Loser

Of course, the real question is...

[gosand]

PCI-E is about making the video processor useful for more than just dumping graphics data. Modern graphics chips are essentially giant geometry calculators, and could be used for far more than they currently are. Due to the fact that PCI-E allows data to be communicated back to the system after it has been processed on the card, this opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. Many 'glitches' in current rendering techniques should dissapear now that the card can relay what the output looks like back to the game driver, allowing it to make on the fly corrections to the image.

The real question is, will it run Linux?

Hmm. Wait a minute - an embedded OS and WM included with the graphics card. Now we're talking!

mobo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have there been any motherboards with pci-express on them yet? I know that the G5's have PCI-X on them

I played three screen quake before!

[splerdu]

3 rigs
1 im playing on
2 set to observer. one viewing an important location, the other one following my enemy.

reel in the frags!

oh wait.. it's cheating?

Your Sig is plagiarized!

[laupark]

Oh yeah, well your sig is taken directly from the dead milkmen's 'stewart', and you didn't even give them credit! Yes I am joking with you, but there is some irony in this post, eh?

Poor Editing

[bismarck2]

The articles say that the new cards will be released in both PCI Express AND AGP form

Spellos and grammos

[Anonymous Coward]

differnet standards - PCI-X is different than "PCI Express".

you mean "different standards - PCI-X is different to "PCI Express"."

Re:Spellos and grammos

[Anonymous Coward]

Different to? Try from instead. Where the fuck did you go to school? Jeez.

Cards don't matter, but chipsets do

[brucmack]

Many people have pointed out that it really doesn't matter if one has just purchased an AGP card just because PCI Express versions are coming out this year... However, it may be influenced by the chipset support.

Intel's roadmaps reveal that none of their next-gen chipsets will have AGP support.

Similarly, SIS' roadmaps reveal that none of their chipsets will have AGP support either. That's for both Intel and AMD processors.

However, VIA's roadmaps show support for AGP throughout 2004 for both Intel and AMD processors.

So there's all the major players in the Intel game, and two for AMD. I would theorize that NVidia will go with whatever solution lets them pimp their high-end GPUs most effectively for their next NForce boards, but I don't remember seeing anything official about this. Anyone got a link?

Future motherboards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are motherboards going to have PCI-Express only or will there be a combo of PCI-Express and PCI-X? Why?

Well..

[destiney]

This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards

Maybe you oughta reconsider those hasty purchases. I'm perfectly happy buying 6 month old hardware. Drivers are usually working pretty good by then and I don't lose nearly the amount of money you do on the "brand new" aspect of it all.

Re:iSCSI?

[DigiShaman]

Unless there is market for for SATA drives that have a MTBF (Mean Time Before Failture) rating like SCSI, then I'm not going the SATA route.

And no, I don't want two SATA drives and RAID them. I want quality, not quantity.

I R confused

[sharrestom]

A number of people seem to be using PCI-X and PCI-Express interchangeably, which has really confused me. I want to buy an Xserve for my next workstation. Therefore I think that I need a PCI-X compatible card (64 bit wide) which, I think, is not the same or compatible with PCI-Express (serial). Help!!

It contradicts the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Since /.ers don't RTFA, it's helpful because it contradicts the line in the story above which reads:

"Interesting to note is that all of these next generation video cards will run exclusively on the PEG (PCI-Express x16) interface."

But yes, it should've still been attributed.

How is it that you read the article, but not the summary on slashdot, anyhow? :P

The cards are cheap, the switches are not...

[Kjella]

...at least not compared to 100Mbit switches, and "normal" use. I stream any mp3/divx/whatever just fine over 100Mbit. I burn DVD+Rs and DVD-Rs at 4x just fine on-the-fly from the network. The only two times I'd really need Gb Ethernet is when moving files around, or load times for anything I'd run remotely (currently: nothing).

So yeah, this machine has GbLan onboard. But I don't have another machine capable, nor a switch. I simply consider it "GbLan ready" for now. When I get a second capable machine, perhaps I'll invest in a switch. And perhaps not even then.

Kjella

Don't forget STEREO.

[Thud457]

You've got to render twice as many frames for stereo viewing.

Ummmmm, no

[metalhed77]

Actually, the human eye can percieve more than that. First of all the human eye has no real FPS, what you mean is flicker fusion threshold which is dependent on lighting. Secondly you DO need that high FPS in games. I can usually tell the differnece in FPS up to about 40, and believe me, it is a difference. Anyone with more info on this willing to chime in? I for one have noticable problems gaming at 24 FPS, but not at 35 or 40.

Re:Ummmmm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

i can tell at 40 when turning really quickly. 60-70 is usually where i can't tell anymore. 30-50 is still decent and playable tho. anything below that is just crap

that said, its a pretty good benchmark of your system if it can stay at 300 fps during a 32 on 32 dm

Re:Ummmmm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The usual convetion is following. 30 FPS for the illusion of movment. 60 FPS for the illusion of motion blur. And at around 72 FPS you will have saturated the eye, gaining no additional benefits.
I usually settle around 75 FPS, but can't tell the difference at about 50 FPS.

That's Slashdot for you

[sgtsanity]

Dozens of comments were posted before either the editor or the posters bothered to actually read the article. Oops!

Actually....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more accurate to say that it's bad for people who just bought top of the line motherboards rather than vid cards. It means that if, in the future, I wish to upgrade my vid card, I now have to upgrade my motherboard as well since current boards don't support PCI-Express.

Do they need to?

[DinZy]

Do the chipsets need to support AGP in order for AGP to be included on mobos? IN other words is it possible to include an onboard PCI_Ex device that handles the AGP card much like current mobos have onboard PCI devices for RAID, sound, ethernet, etc? If it is possible then AGP support will be left entirely up to motherboard manufacturers who, I'm sure, would include it to tout it as another feature.

Re:Do they need to?

[brucmack]

They would have to have some sort of bridge between the interfaces in order to do this. This is simply because the north and south bridges on the chipset are not going to have PCI or AGP support, just PCI Express. If there is some way to translate the schemes in between, then yeah, a mobo manufacturer could do it, but it'd probably either be expensive or a pretty ugly hack job.

MOD PARENT UP!! FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP!! FUNNY

Re:This is good news (bad news for mini-ITX)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, those nice mini-ITX boards typically have exactly one PCI slot (but you can buy a 2 slot riser of course.) What concerns me is that (AFAIK) most graphics chips support both AGP and ye olde PCI, with (presumably) a pin strap to configure it for the board (PCI or AGP) - 'cos otherwise it would be expensive to make two chip designs. So will PCI Express killing AGP also kill ye olde PCI option? Then it will make it harder to use a graphics card to accelerate MPEG/DiVX playback (not just games) on mini-ITX systems until these also get PCI Express - but since the PCI slot on mini-ITX is there to support other PCI peripherals than graphics cards, such as TV tuners, will mini-ITX ever have PCI Express?

funny.... agp is pci

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought agp is pci, (pumped up for graphics) it only has two additions, side band addressing, and i think all agp devices are bustemastering (and the funny connector) devices.

Re:iSCSI?

[B5_geek]

Yes, I agree that reliability should be a #1 concern.

One thing that I think SCSI will still always win is sustained transfer rate as well. I own two 250 Gb SATA drives that I use for storage, and if I were to copy files from one drive to another it feels like it crawls compared to my U2W SCSI drives, and they are 2 generations old!

This is great for multimonitors...

[Anonymous Coward]

As nice as AGP is, if you want to have multiple monitors, you need multiple cards. There is a dire shortage of high-performance non-AGP cards.

This is a good development.

PCIe, AGP and Mobos

[Lagged2Death]

ATI has promised - as the AnandTech article states - that 2004-model GPUs will all be available in both native PCIe and AGP form.

If you just bought a fancy new motherboard with AGP, you'll have plenty of chances to upgrade your video, and when AGP finally does go away, you'll probably be thinking about a new motherboard anyway.

It bodes very well

[Performer Guy]

I paid top dollar for my fancy mobo and this bodes very well for me. I love it that they're increasing the bus and linearizing teh DMA memory. No more small AGP apertures. I love it.

The other thing that's awesome is that they're going straight for the PCI-Express 16X. This is just fantastic. I was concerned that they're make do with 8X or less for the first generation but they're really going for it.

These MOBOS will also have PCI-Express peripheral buses and that's going to finally blow the doors off the PC bus bandwidth limits, this is going to make really fast RAID, very fast networking and more, feasible at consumer PC pricepoints. Some this stuff has until now been the preserve of high end systems.

So I for one welcome our new mobo overlords. Please don't stop the train just because I boarded at an earlier station.

Re: only 3 monitors! Bah!

[Hel Toupee]

anything less than this just isn't worth doing

I'm still in Hold Mode

[Bruha]

PCI Express is one peice of the superfast home computer puzzle but where's the solid state drives that made all the headlines from last year? I may have a ATI 9700 Pro but I'm reluctant to upgrade to a AMD 64 system due to uncertain decisions in the market lately.

We have

ATX Redesign ATB? and were seeing new cases

New motherboards will follow that with PCI-X

AMD Possibly giving Intel the smackdown with a long awaited frequency increase (If you dont realize AMD proc's can beat a Intel proc on task basis but not freq based benchmarks.. Match frequencies and you'll blow them out of the water)

Solid State Drives are supposed to pop up here somewhere. Imagine the possibilities!

Of course gaming may force my hand this fall with the new releases of MMORPG's such as WOW since I dont tolerate any lag from my machines in these games unless it's network related. Just hope those Shuttle AMD 64 XPC's come down in price.

Re:I'm still in Hold Mode

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be better off buying a nice case and an ATX mobo with integrated audio, video, and LAN. Cheaper too. I looked at the Shuttles and Asus Pundit (ironically, I prefer Intel), and I finally settled on an Antec Overture case with an Intel D865GBFLK mobo. That comes with GigE, support for SATA, AGP 8X, among a few other niceties. Much better feature set than the Pundit at the same price and $20-$40 cheaper than a Shuttle XPC that has less to offer.

AMD's nice, but if you look closer, you'll find that you can get as much or more total "computer" on an Intel box.

AGP was the modern "VESA local bus"

[GodWasAnAlien]

I never bought an AGP card , as I thought it was a very temporary solution that no one assumed would replace PCI.

I never bought a VESA local bus card either, actually.

Re:AGP was the modern "VESA local bus"

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my aren't we smug. I take it you have been having fun with your standard PCI graphics card?

In other news...

[Kenja]

According to Xbitlabs and AnandTech, the specifications for ATI's newest graphics cards have been revealed. Interesting to note is that all of these next generation video cards will run exclusively on the PCI interface. This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of VESA-Localbus cards.

Article should read...

[brsmith4]

This does not bode well for those of us that have recently purchased high-end agp cards and are cursed with an in-grown desire to "compensate".

They have surgery for that, you know.

Where this could realy go

[fireteller2]

I think the exciting thing about this is that we will finally have the possibility to multipipe our graphics systems. A gamer can have a very good system with one card installed, but a graphics workstation might have 4 installed. Not going to 4 monitors as others have mentioned, but all splitting the load for one display for 4 times the performance.

As it is I have to have 4 full machines and a wicked fast network to do the same.

fire

Misleading article summary

[Artifex]

I guess the submitter missed this important line on the first page of Anandtech:

It's also worth noting that all of ATI's GPUs will be available in both PCIe and AGP flavors throughout 2004.

If you want to buy an AGP based motherboard this year, go right ahead. If you're worried about AGP cards going up in price, Fry's is selling 128 MB cards based on the 5200 Nvidia line. with TV out, for $90 or less after rebate. Sure, it's not the latest or greatest, but it's pretty cheap for what you get.

Whining about AGP not being on future boards is like whining about ISA not being available. AGP just no longer will cut it, in the future, for the newest and fastest technologies.

Re:iSCSI?

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent is obviously very confused -- iSCSI is SCSI over TCP/IP and is designed for SAN use. You'll probably never see it on your workstation.

However, you're right about SCSI being dead -- "Serial Attached SCSI" is coming and it's really just a gussed up version of SATA. So there will basically be 1 interface standard, but the "SAS" drives will have more features, higher reliability, etc.

Upgrade bind

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue of obsolesence here is not the usual one... sure, normally your card goes obsolete fast. It's very unusual, however, tha tyou buy a top of the line card and you CAN'T keep it for three years reasonably.

In this case, you might need to upgrade your motherboard for some other reason... perhaps it just breaks in six motnhs. What are you going to do? Get an edge-of-obsolete AGP motherboard to keep your 9800 Pro XT? Or buy a new top-line video card so you can move to PCI-X? We already have so many of these questions with RAM, the SATA interface, chipsets... It's almost impossible to know, now, what will be most future-proof.

Perhaps you NEED PCI-X for a specialized interfeace card you're getting... vid-cap or some such. Gotta toss out the Radeon.

It is, however, a little like saying "this earthquake was bad news for people living on the fault." Earthquakes are going to happen, and it's obvious who will get hurt.

How about a Radeon 9800 Pro for $200 instead?

[Ride-My-Rocket]

CompUSA has a $30 rebate on 9800 Pros purchased between February 14 - 21, 2004, which brings the price of that card down to $200. Sounds like a sweet offer to me, considering that the same cash bought a 9500 Pro a year ago.

Watch for Video Card retailer shake up.

[index72]

Retailers that bought large supplies of AGP video cards may find themselves in financial difficulties as the value of their products on the shelf plummets. They may not be able to sell their stock at any price. A similar thing happened many years ago when CB Radios went from 23 channels to 40 channels.

SShhhhhh

[geekoid]

it's people like him that makes it sweet for people like you and me. Let them foolishl^H^H^H^H^H Wisely spend there money the moment a product comes out.

PCI Express+Motherboard integration = Amiga?

[fallen1]

Well, call me old school for bringing this up, but the more I read about how the graphics chips/cards as well as (I'm betting) sound and anything else you can plug into the PCI interface becomes more "integrated" with the motherboard to allow faster communication, better memory allotment, etc. it all reminds me of the design of the Amiga. Yes, the Amiga. The Amiga could do the most amazing things with graphics and sound and memory that PCs did not catch up with for many years all due to the design of the Amiga and NOW I see PCs converging towards the Amiga ideal (tighter integration of motherboard/processor/RAM/video/sound) with the added bonus of plug-and-play or hot-swap capability. Am I missing something in what I have read? Or is the PC world evolving into what the Amiga could have been if Commodore hadn't fscked it up?

Anybody remember Matrox?

[mikelambert70]

PCI Express could possibly bring out some new interesting developments from Matrox. The 256 MB Parhelia is nice, but somewhat limited 3D performance, and the 3-head desktop is limited to 1280x1024 panels, not exactly hi-res anymore.

But think about a Matrox card with more 3D horsepower and DVI support for three 1600x1200 panels to realize a 4800x1200 desktop, now that would really be something.

With Viewsonic's slim edge 20" panels you'd have a very high res 60" wide monitor view. Nothing short of astounding would that be. Even the thought turned me all Yoda.

Re:Anybody remember Matrox?

[Anonymous Coward]

AGP bandwidth probably isn't the problem. 3D performance was never a selling point of Matrox cards. 2D quality (high resolution and refresh rates with a clear display) was a major feature.

I bought a G400 several years ago, mainly because it was well-supported by open-source drivers. Apparently that's not true any more with the Parhelia, so I'm not too interested (AFAIK, ATI is the only manufacturer with decent open-source support).

Re: only 3 monitors! Bah!

[Holi]

i don't get it. why the link to the thg logo?

You would think that wouldn't you.

[Confessed Geek]

You'd think so, but for most cases (pun intended) It just ain't true. Maybe we just tend to get cheap cases ;) but I've had a LOT of personal experience with systems that crash from heat with the case on, but run fine with it off. I think you are perpetuating a computing myth.

Re: only 3 monitors! Bah!

[Hel Toupee]

They pulled the damn picture!!! Bastards!!!

it was a pic of MS Flight Simulator set up to look like it was displaying on 15 or so monitors. Google didn't cache it either.

Big deal

[HeavensTrash]

This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards.

For those of us who paid top dollar for the latest generation AGP cards, the fact that something new is coming out is no surprise. I have a Radeon 9800XT. Am I mad that now AGP is being phased out? Not really, it's to be expected. So far we've had to deal with PCI -> AGP, and then the various speeds of AGP requiring different motherboards for optimal performance. It's nothing new really, and I'm not too upset by it. Right now I'm pulling 150+ FPS on UT2004 at 1280x1024 max resolution - when that drops down below acceptable, I'll upgrade. Same cycle as always

Re: only 3 monitors! Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

They pulled the damn picture!!! Bastards!!!

The link works for me. Maybe it's because I have referer-blocking enabled - try copying the link and pasting it into your address bar manually: http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040216 /images/excitement.jpg (remove the space before "/images")

It appears to be 13 monitors with about 7-8 computers. Pretty cool, but I don't think a typical 15-amp electrical circuit would handle that very well.

Time to ditch?

[Keitero-sama]

So is it the beginning of the end for AGP? Guess I have to spend another 500+ dollars for a new motherboard, ram, CPU, and video card.

Re:KARMA WHORE ALERT!!!

[Slime-dogg]

I would, but I posted already. Doh!