AGP not enough card? Think again

[KimTjik]

@ Angry Games

 

Since the question is very important to many and as you point out some get very stressed by the speed which platforms and graphic-cards gets upgraded, there's a need of down-to-earth information both based on figures and on an "opinion" beyond syntetic tests from a users point of view.

 

That said I think your post feels too aggresive, like you're - unwillingly I suppose - asking for an argument. The phrasing doesn't have to be boaring, no it's more fun to read something a bit spicey, and such rethoric adds up in making the point clear. In this case though I believe it's contrawise.

 

In comparison I'm really dumb when it comes to technical stuff about computer hardware, thus I even more appreciate all the information I get at this forum, including your very interesting and valuable posts. But I think some editing to this one would be productive.

[albumleaf]

Yeah.. those with decent systems need not upgrade for a little while, but don't make it seem like NF3's going to be a future proof platform.

[Angry_Games]

And like shaolin95 said, AG's not saying if you're building a new rig, build an NF3 AGP setup,

but if you already have 1, you can get by nicely without upgrading to NF4 for awhile longer.

 

*sigh*

 

How come only 3 of you understood this? Was I not clear enough in my original post?

[NEOAethyr]

Actually guys...

 

AGP can actually beat out the performance of pci-e.

Comparitive from nf2 -> nf4.

My benchs I posted some time ago were actually beating out a guys benchs with pci-e, nv cards, mine a 6600gt, the othe I think it was a 7800gtx or gt.

 

Granted my perfroamnce lately is wacked, why I could'nt post in that compare thread that was around some time ago.

However like I said, results I took earlyer were actually higher.

 

So...

If you oc the heck of the agp bus, it can compare to pci-e easyly .

There really is'nt a diffrence either way I would suppose.

Anyone that says we're running out of bandwith with the pci-e bus is, well lets say they don't know what they're talking about .

Either the cards, or the drivers/etc just cannot upload/download that fast.

 

I'm not saying there is'nt anything out there that may use u[p the full bandwith.

What I am saying is if there is, we can't doit at all.

Meaning if such a program exists, it will not run full speed no matter what card you have ^^.

 

 

So..

If you're gonna buy a brand new rig and such.

Pick what ou want for the bus, agp or pci-e.

Assuming the board it's self comes 1st, then the bus that handles the video card.

 

So if you think the pci-e boards are better, by all means get that.

If you think the agp boards are just as good, by all means get that one.

If the boards are in actual the same, with oc'ing potential, stable, speed and options, then you only need to decide what sort of bus you think you need.

 

Pci-e, for the cheaper cards, sometimes diffrent cores, and diffrent pcb's, sli.

AGP, for that single card solution, I'm gonna give that guys sli setup a run for it's money type of thing .

 

 

It is a shame though that you can only get mid range cards on the agp bus right now :.

 

 

Anyways anyways...

I'm not saing that pci-e could'nt be faster.

The fact is though, you can get agp 8x up to what pci-e 16x does right now.

That and beyond.

So it's really up to what you prefer, that and what you can afford(video card wise).

 

 

Offtopic:

Did you know you can flash a pci-e bios to an agp card?

You can probably do it the other way around too.

Nvidia though, I don't have any ati cards these days.

 

Laters

[Guest shaolin95]

My benchs I posted some time ago were actually beating out a guys benchs with pci-e, nv cards, mine a 6600gt, the othe I think it was a 7800gtx or gt

Are you serious? Where is the link. The only way that I can see that happen is with the guy having a serious bottle neck due to a really really slow CPU cause the 6600gt cant even touch my 6800gt much less a 7800gt no matter how much overclocking you do on it. So my choices are, you are joking or the guy has the worst bottleneck Ive seen in a long time.

[albumleaf]

Actually guys...

 

AGP can actually beat out the performance of pci-e.

Comparitive from nf2 -> nf4.

My benchs I posted some time ago were actually beating out a guys benchs with pci-e, nv cards, mine a 6600gt, the othe I think it was a 7800gtx or gt.

 

Granted my perfroamnce lately is wacked, why I could'nt post in that compare thread that was around some time ago.

However like I said, results I took earlyer were actually higher.

 

So...

If you oc the heck of the agp bus, it can compare to pci-e easyly .

There really is'nt a diffrence either way I would suppose.

Anyone that says we're running out of bandwith with the pci-e bus is, well lets say they don't know what they're talking about .

Either the cards, or the drivers/etc just cannot upload/download that fast.

 

I'm not saying there is'nt anything out there that may use u[p the full bandwith.

What I am saying is if there is, we can't doit at all.

Meaning if such a program exists, it will not run full speed no matter what card you have ^^.

 

 

So..

If you're gonna buy a brand new rig and such.

Pick what ou want for the bus, agp or pci-e.

Assuming the board it's self comes 1st, then the bus that handles the video card.

 

So if you think the pci-e boards are better, by all means get that.

If you think the agp boards are just as good, by all means get that one.

If the boards are in actual the same, with oc'ing potential, stable, speed and options, then you only need to decide what sort of bus you think you need.

 

Pci-e, for the cheaper cards, sometimes diffrent cores, and diffrent pcb's, sli.

AGP, for that single card solution, I'm gonna give that guys sli setup a run for it's money type of thing .

 

 

It is a shame though that you can only get mid range cards on the agp bus right now :.

 

 

Anyways anyways...

I'm not saing that pci-e could'nt be faster.

The fact is though, you can get agp 8x up to what pci-e 16x does right now.

That and beyond.

So it's really up to what you prefer, that and what you can afford(video card wise).

 

 

Offtopic:

Did you know you can flash a pci-e bios to an agp card?

You can probably do it the other way around too.

Nvidia though, I don't have any ati cards these days.

 

Laters

 

Yes, there is no bandwidth limitation of the AGP slot, and I find it hard to believe that you could even compete with any 7800 series card. You're a tad delusional.

[NEOAethyr]

I'm not joking.

I'll look the thing up, give me a min here...

 

Ok, lemme get the links out of the way so you guys can grab the 2 scores, from me and the other guy.

 

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39605

Page 2, look for my results, read the thread too btw, probably somewhat relivant.

 

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40036

 

 

Allright.

As you can see, mine does beat his, by a decent amount in certain areas.

However, his beats mine on avg.

This is because the pci-e bus has a lot more potential.

But it does not mean you can't do the same with agp .

 

Edit:

Just gonna shorten it up...

 

I got some 3dmark03 scores in the 32bit section.

I'm not sure if they're still up though.

Last year when I ran it last, it was 11-12k.

I think it was 11200 to be exact I can't rememeber.

Could be higher now, but I need to get eveything stable 1st.

Starting with my system, then my video card.

 

If you guys want to bench, give me the word, I'll bench.

It may take me a while I dn.

Then again I may just bench as is to show you how much of a problem I got on my hands(though I did install a fresh windows lately...).

I might get a decent 3dmark score though..., that does'nt use much bandwith at all through the bus.

 

3dmark works though for benching interface speeds.

Though it'll show you a very minor diffrence.

 

 

Anyways believe me or not.

It's your choice, your loss, or maybe it is'nt.

Does'nt matter to me that much, sure it may tick me off, but I'm used to it lol, still ticks me off though and I'm getting better about that.

I would like for people to at least listen once in a while though ^^, and take some things as actual possibilitys.

Instead of just blowing me off.

[Guest shaolin95]

Quake 4, Fear, Doom3, BF2....those are not benchmarks but actual games and there is NO WAY a 6600gt beats a 6800GT much less a 7800GT. As I said, maybe he had a 1.6GHZ CPU and you had a much faster one thus his bottleneck gave you the chance of beating him in some CPU intensive games and thats just trying to give you a chance. Maybe I should try my Viper V770 TNT2 as it could probably kick my 6800s butt! :shake:

No offense but this doesnt need much research...its plain and simple, a 6600gt while a very good gaming card is no where near a 7800gt nor 6800gt.

[Sabrehawk2]

I couldnt agree more with Angry.

 

I have bought a AGP X800 XT PE (pre-modded vivo pro in fact) in June last

year, simply cause i was looking for a top end upgrade for my platform,

wasnt willing to change my mainboard and cpu (financial reasons).

 

The card back then though was far from being cheap ...that was the main

reason i was not going to PCI-E on my next purchase in autumn..that

envolved changing from 32bit CPU to 64Bit cpu platform and to a DFI board.

The only solution for a modern AGP board to me seemed the Ultra-D and

i was right about that i think. Getting the revision 3 of it that was just released

shortly before i bought it, was a good choice i think.

 

I admit i have most certainly gained more out of this platform and cpu upgrade

then i gained from changing from my trusty 9700 to the x800. Changing to PCI-E

and a new GFX Card that would satisfy my need wouldve ment a good PCI-E

mainboard, cpu and a nvidia 7800 and that wouldve surely bust my bank account.

Now im on the top end of what AGP Boards will ever be i think. I dont think

they will release much better AGP boards. So as soon as the PCI-E boards

are really at the height of their quality and evolution i will probably change

to it and will also have a affordable gfx upgrade that now cost too much, and

i will also have room for cpu upgrade cause i bought a very affordable 3700+ san

diego (not even dual core).So if i decide to upgrade on GFX and CPU at the

end of my usual 12-18 months lifecylce calculation those upgrades will not

be top end then but they will be matured products and affordable high end still.

 

And yes talking about mainboards and maturity. A mistake i never will repeat

is to buy a newly released mainboard on its first 1-2 revision step, and if it

also has a brand new chipset i wouldnt touch it with a ten foot pole until its

at least 6-8 months on the market.

[NEOAethyr]

Quake 4, Fear, Doom3, BF2....those are not benchmarks but actual games and there is NO WAY a 6600gt beats a 6800GT much less a 7800GT. As I said, maybe he had a 1.6GHZ CPU and you had a much faster one thus his bottleneck gave you the chance of beating him in some CPU intensive games and thats just trying to give you a chance. Maybe I should try my Viper V770 TNT2 as it could probably kick my 6800s butt! :shake:

No offense but this doesnt need much research...its plain and simple, a 6600gt while a very good gaming card is no where near a 7800gt nor 6800gt.

 

 

Oui dude.

I'm talking about bandwith.

I believe I've allready said that a 6600gt is'nt a 6800u, nor a 7800gt/x.

 

Take 2 cards.

One pci-e, and the other agp.

Both are nvidia, for ref.

Both use a hsi bridge(err, both cores are pci-e based I mean, one using a translation, ie hsi bridge).

Both are from the same company, same bios, very little diffs in the bios.

Only diffs, speeds, and bios string txt, pcb rev, and oem id's, strap id's, perhaps device id's.

 

Ok, now these are actually the same cards now are'nt they?

Bench these, oc the agp bus to 100mhz at min, up to 115 to 120.

Use pci-e 16x, stock mhz.

 

They will euqal out to the same exact performance.

Pci-e having an edge on avg, this is bandwith from and to the bus only!

However, the agp with edge out in certain areas.

 

This may need a push though, so say both have modded drivers, the agp rev now has modified agp setup regs.

The pci-e user has no knowledge on how to hack the regs that's why he's no doing that .

Still shoudl be about equal though, agp will defently edge out though like I was saying.

 

Ok now do you get it?

Bandwith.

Bandwith.

 

Not the darn cards.

We all know what card is what here.

 

Bandiwth is'nt that inportant in pc gaming.

The majority of it now these days anyways, you could do just fine with a agp card compared to the SAME pci-e card.

Liek I said though, there is better pci-e cards then agp cards.

This depends on money.

 

The nf3, this is a diff board.

For one it's single chan.

For 2, it's a diff board.

 

Though just because it has an agp bus doe'snt make it last years garbage.

It's just fine.

 

Pick your board 1st!

Then pick your card.

 

Btw, doom3 was faster on my quadro4 at 1st then it was on my 6600gt^^.

Not anymore though, it took me a while to get a better driver for these newer cards going but still.

My quadro 4 was running at 100x2 mem too btw, long story, said it many times, zip tie snapped.

You do know what a quadro4 900xgl is right?

 

Do you think that should beat out a 6600gt ?

 

 

Edit:

Actually a 6600gt modified, with drivers, can compare to a 6800U, noy just gt.

You can actually beat a 6800u with a 6600gt, a 6600gt with 128bit mem bus non the less.

 

Matter of fact, you can even beat the majority of water cooling setups on these with just air.

That ticks people off for sure, I defently noticed that so I don't bother telling people they water cooling setups are under par anymore.

Some are better then my cooling though, but that's to be expected out of water cooling.

 

As for the tnt .

Those suckers were pretty sweet dude.

I just wish I had a pci one to through in my rig, I'd use it for 2d straight up.

Good cards those tnt's.

[Kandoo]

I agree with you A-G. my son has a amd 2400 cpu with a 9700 pro and he can play all the games just fine, just tone down the bling.

[Mikepags]

*sigh*

 

How come only 3 of you understood this? Was I not clear enough in my original post?

 

AG have you tried modding the X800, It worked for me on the 850pro to XT PE

Here http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=97283 Good post ,, and yea I get it.