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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"
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.
People who have the last-gen AGP cards will continue to use them...
"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.
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.
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)
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.
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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?
This statement is false.
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
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 ;-)
Please help metamoderate.
...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.
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.
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.
READY.
#
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.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
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.
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.
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.
everything in moderation
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.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.