JIMINATOR
06-16-2004, 03:51 PM
just a warning to anyone that is going to buy one of the new dual
pci express boards that include an agp slot. the theory is great, but:
the pci express spec does not include anything about agp, as
pci express runs at twice the speed of an agp slot. (and pci-x cards
should do much better with cards that have huge amounts of textures)
pci-x does however support pci slots. an agp slot is really a pci slot, run
at 8x (or 4x or 2x) the speed of a pci card. note when i say runs at, i mean
the rate it can transfer information to/from memory/cpu. so if you get a
pci-x board that includes an agp slot, you will really be running the agp
card at pci speeds. it will work great on most games, just some of
the newer ones that have lots of textures will take a hit. ati has
started a soft launch of pci-x cards. their cards are built for pci-x,
whereas nvidia uses the same gpu along with a bridge chip for
the board type. yet to be determined if their cards will take a hit...
so, the advice as always is to.... wait a few months.
pci express boards that include an agp slot. the theory is great, but:
the pci express spec does not include anything about agp, as
pci express runs at twice the speed of an agp slot. (and pci-x cards
should do much better with cards that have huge amounts of textures)
pci-x does however support pci slots. an agp slot is really a pci slot, run
at 8x (or 4x or 2x) the speed of a pci card. note when i say runs at, i mean
the rate it can transfer information to/from memory/cpu. so if you get a
pci-x board that includes an agp slot, you will really be running the agp
card at pci speeds. it will work great on most games, just some of
the newer ones that have lots of textures will take a hit. ati has
started a soft launch of pci-x cards. their cards are built for pci-x,
whereas nvidia uses the same gpu along with a bridge chip for
the board type. yet to be determined if their cards will take a hit...
so, the advice as always is to.... wait a few months.