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ATI PCI-Express Devices Revealed

Posted by Hemos on from the building-towards-the-future dept.

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"

5 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. PCI-E about features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

  2. Does this mean anything for non-gamers? by G4from128k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
    1. Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers? by wwwrun · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  3. Re:Why? by dave420-2 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

  4. PCI-Express == Vector CoProcessor by BuildMonkey · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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!