AGP vs PCI-E - how big is the difference?

Hello. I have a 9800pro, I'm looking to upgrade to something that's
capable of running Roboblitz. My mobo only supports AGP and I'm
wondering if it would be wiser to buy a lower-priced card for now and
wait til I upgrade to a motherboard that supports PCI-E (which I won't
be doing soon) to buy a more expensive card. I guess what I'm asking
is how does the AGP version of a card compare to the PCI-E version of
the same card? Is the performance gap large enough to make buying an
AGP card in the $200.00 U.S. range a waste of money?

BrockLanders wrote:

Hello. I have a 9800pro, I'm looking to upgrade to something
that's
capable of running Roboblitz. My mobo only supports AGP and I'm
wondering if it would be wiser to buy a lower-priced card for now
and wait til I upgrade to a motherboard that supports PCI-E (which
I won't be doing soon) to buy a more expensive card. I guess what
I'm asking is how does the AGP version of a card compare to the
PCI-E version of the same card? Is the performance gap large
enough to make buying an AGP card in the $200.00 U.S. range a
waste of money?


The selection of high-performance PCI-E is huge compared to the
selection of AGP video cards. That was a major factor that got me to
upgrade the mainboard/CPU. I probably shouldn't have spent money on
an AGP upgrade first, from a lesser card than yours.

If you want to know what card might run your game, find a
group/forum with players of that game. The users are the ones who
know what hardware works.

Good luck and have fun.

what kind of processor do you have and how much ram.
there is no sense to buy a high end agp card if your cpu and ram will slow
it down.
"BrockLanders" wrote in message
...
Hello. I have a 9800pro, I'm looking to upgrade to something that's
capable of running Roboblitz. My mobo only supports AGP and I'm
wondering if it would be wiser to buy a lower-priced card for now and
wait til I upgrade to a motherboard that supports PCI-E (which I won't
be doing soon) to buy a more expensive card. I guess what I'm asking
is how does the AGP version of a card compare to the PCI-E version of
the same card? Is the performance gap large enough to make buying an
AGP card in the $200.00 U.S. range a waste of money?

In article , BrockLanders
says...
Hello. I have a 9800pro, I'm looking to upgrade to something that's
capable of running Roboblitz. My mobo only supports AGP and I'm
wondering if it would be wiser to buy a lower-priced card for now and
wait til I upgrade to a motherboard that supports PCI-E (which I won't
be doing soon) to buy a more expensive card. I guess what I'm asking
is how does the AGP version of a card compare to the PCI-E version of
the same card? Is the performance gap large enough to make buying an
AGP card in the $200.00 U.S. range a waste of money?

THere are companies releasing top end AGP cards. You can buy a Geforece
7600 and an ATI 1900XL is on its way in AGP form - both of which are
more than enough.



--
Conor

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright
until you hear them speak.........

Conor wrote:

In article , BrockLanders
says...
Hello. I have a 9800pro, I'm looking to upgrade to something that's
capable of running Roboblitz. My mobo only supports AGP and I'm
wondering if it would be wiser to buy a lower-priced card for now and
wait til I upgrade to a motherboard that supports PCI-E (which I won't
be doing soon) to buy a more expensive card. I guess what I'm asking
is how does the AGP version of a card compare to the PCI-E version of
the same card? Is the performance gap large enough to make buying an
AGP card in the $200.00 U.S. range a waste of money?

THere are companies releasing top end AGP cards. You can buy a Geforece
7600 and an ATI 1900XL is on its way in AGP form - both of which are
more than enough.

Yes, and benchtests by various websites have shown that the PCIe cards
perform very little better than the AGP couterparts even on these high-end
cards.

This will probably change in time, but not yet.

Cheers!

--
Graham
Website - http://www.thedeathzone.free-online.co.uk

On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:38:02 +0100, fwibbler
wrote:


Yes, and benchtests by various websites have shown that the PCIe cards
perform very little better than the AGP couterparts even on these high-end
cards.

This will probably change in time, but not yet.

Cheers!

Do you have any links to these websites? I would like to have a look
at the comparisons.

And thanks to everyone for the replies.

"BrockLanders" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:38:02 +0100, fwibbler
wrote:


Yes, and benchtests by various websites have shown that the PCIe cards
perform very little better than the AGP couterparts even on these high-end
cards.

This will probably change in time, but not yet.

Cheers!

Do you have any links to these websites? I would like to have a look
at the comparisons.

And thanks to everyone for the replies.

There's no need to look at the comparisons. There isn't a video card
released (to date) that will be slowed down (even slightly) by the bandwidth
of the AGP bus. Any "differences" in speed of AGP vx. PCI-Express are
usually related to some 'kludge' that a manufacturer comes up with to force
a card to work on the other bus. For example, card AX8579 (made up model)
is AGP only, but XFX puts a PCI-Express bridge on it to allow the card to be
sold as PCI-Express. Now the card is slightly slowed down by the added
chip(s). This is because it is an AGP card running on a PCI-Express bus.
The same thing can happen if you force a PCI-Express video card to run on a
AGP mainboard, using some kind of bridge chip(s). The AGP version will be
slowed down very slightly, because it is a PCI-Express card running in an
AGP slot. -Dave

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt "Mike T." wrote:


"BrockLanders" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:38:02 +0100, fwibbler
wrote:


Yes, and benchtests by various websites have shown that the PCIe cards
perform very little better than the AGP couterparts even on these high-end
cards.

This will probably change in time, but not yet.

Cheers!

Do you have any links to these websites? I would like to have a look
at the comparisons.

And thanks to everyone for the replies.

There's no need to look at the comparisons. There isn't a video card
released (to date) that will be slowed down (even slightly) by the bandwidth
of the AGP bus.

That's assuming your motherboard supports full speed AGP ...
preferably 8x.

But then: if not, why are you bothering to compare?

Any "differences" in speed of AGP vx. PCI-Express are
usually related to some 'kludge' that a manufacturer comes up with to force
a card to work on the other bus. For example, card AX8579 (made up model)
is AGP only, but XFX puts a PCI-Express bridge on it to allow the card to be
sold as PCI-Express. Now the card is slightly slowed down by the added
chip(s). This is because it is an AGP card running on a PCI-Express bus.
The same thing can happen if you force a PCI-Express video card to run on a
AGP mainboard, using some kind of bridge chip(s). The AGP version will be
slowed down very slightly, because it is a PCI-Express card running in an
AGP slot. -Dave

The selling point of PCI-Express, is that it's newer and thus
*supposedly* better and faster. Maybe it *will* be ... someday.

--
_____
/ ' / â„¢
,-/-, __ __. ____ /_
(_/ / (_(_/|_/ / _/ _

The selling point of PCI-Express, is that it's newer and thus
*supposedly* better and faster. Maybe it *will* be ... someday.


MY prediction:

Video cards/GPUs will get fast enough to almost take advantage of the extra
bandwidth of PCI-Express X16, right around the same time that some new (and
larger bandwidth) bus technology is fielded. -Dave

And that area may already be here. I have 2 PCs.
One is AGP running a ATI 9800. The other is PCI-e
running an nVidia 7900. I see a huge difference in
gaming, but I also see a huge difference in the
PVR performance I have in each. The AGP uses
a Hauppauge 350 on the pci bus, and it has big
problems with audio-video sync. The PCI-e uses
an ATI 550 Pro in a pci-e X1 slot, and it has no
problem with audio-video sync. And this weekend,
I was looking at new LCD-TVs with DVR top boxes.
Guess what ? The DVR cannot keep audio-video
sync'd when using satilite reception. There is your
11 billion $$$ industry crapping out because their
DVRs are not fast enough ... pci bus no doubt
with AGP video. You are not going to hang an
ATI TV-box that sends your PC movies to your
TV set on a PCI bus.

johns