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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"

41 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Cheaper prices by di0s · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Cheaper prices by flewp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
    2. Re:Cheaper prices by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
    3. Re:Cheaper prices by ViolentGreen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
    4. Re:Cheaper prices by jridley · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Cheaper prices by JPriest · · Score: 5, Informative
      "ATI's GPUs will be available in both PCIe and AGP flavors throughout 2004."

      I guess even the submitter did not RTFA.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
  2. buyers of last-gen AGP cards? by SoTuA · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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...

    1. Re:buyers of last-gen AGP cards? by ckotchey · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    2. Re:buyers of last-gen AGP cards? by DrMindWarp · · Score: 5, Informative
      PCI-X != PCI-Express

      Check out PCI-SIG.

  3. great! by satramell · · Score: 5, Funny

    at least someone besides viagra is concerned about performance enhancments

  4. Nature of the beast by Bronz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

  5. For those of you like me... by zegebbers · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 ;-) .

    --
    Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
    1. Re:For those of you like me... by wowbagger · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.
      --
      www.eFax.com are spammers
  6. Um, no by thetzar · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. Re:How fast? by fatwreckfan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. Why doesn't it bode well???? by NiteHaqr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)

  9. Drivers by rjelks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --


    Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
    1. Re:Drivers by parksie · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  10. 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...

    1. Re:PCI-E about features by LankyBoycie · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.
  11. Took them a while. by NegativeK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  12. Re:Yeaaaahhhhoooo! by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 /.

  13. Huh? by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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 ;-)

    --
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  14. I just paid top-dollar for an AGP card... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

  15. AGP/PCI-X is not the most important thing... by S3D · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  16. 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.

    2. Re:Does this mean anything for non-gamers? by rsmith-mac · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  17. 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.

  18. You were warned... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  19. Call me crazy... by rqqrtnb · · Score: 4, Informative

    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. :)

  20. Re:KARMA WHORE ALERT!!! by DarkHelmet · · Score: 4, Funny
    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.

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
  21. Bandwidth Schmandwidth by MagerValp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    #
  22. asortyl UT2K4 WILL BE BEGGING FOR MORE hagluhsulg by J.+Jacques · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

    --
    http://www.questionablecontent.net
  23. Re:AGP doesn't make sense by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  24. The big news here seems to be by ahfoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  25. Re:I got screwed by lostchicken · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    -twb
  26. 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!

  27. Depends on your use... by Kjella · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  28. Cards don't matter, but chipsets do by brucmack · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

  29. Re:How fast? by default+luser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.