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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

great!

[satramell]

at least someone besides viagra is concerned about performance enhancments

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!

[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.

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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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. :)

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

[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!

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

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.

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?

[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: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.

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.

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. :)

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

[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.

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.

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: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: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!

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

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.

hardly matters

[prisoner]

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

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: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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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: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: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.