are AGP motherboards dead

[TriRy]

hello out there anandTech world! ok hopefully you all can help.. and im sure you can..

So the question is easy, how dead are AGP motherboards?

the mission - simple. upgrade my (once newest and fastest) Athlon XP 1800+ to a new .. either intel dual core, or amd64 bit processor (obviously i'm trying to upgrade to some type of 64-bit architechure, as i see this being the future of computers) although i realize that software does not full take advantage of 64-bit processors, none the less, id like to upgrade to that

and

the problem - i have a ATI 9800 PRO 256 MB AGP card (beastly) - which I spent a pretty penny on and would like to keep in my new system. However, everything looks like it is now PCI Express Graphics supported and I'd rather not get rid of my powerhouse graphics card just to upgrade my processor and i feel like i would be losing performance for my gaming applications if I did go this route.

so, whats your advice? get a dell dude? i have no idea, should i stil with my agp card, or start looking in another direction? i still feel like my card will out power most all pci-e cards, or does the data transfer rate make a lesser gfx card faster than my agp card?

i have too many questions.. any thoughts so far?

 

[grooge]

check out Asrock 939dual sata2

 

[Jibboom]

At some point AGP will be no more, I'd advise waiting untill you can afford to replace the graphics card, processor, ram etc all at the same time. Your graphics card is only low-mid-range-ish now, too.

 

[Conky]

Get one of these link and one of these link.

Then you can re-use your AGP videocard and even your old DDR RAM.

 

[TriRy]

thanks for those speedy replys.. ill check out that Asrock .. and yea i know, afford, the secret word why is everything always so expensive! haha thanks again, ...


so AGP is dying huh? sad day! is pci-e really that much faster in terms of data transfering?

 

[AndyHui]

The potential speed is much faster, ie it allows for much faster transfers, and it is equivalent of more than AGP16X (in both directions).

There's pretty much no performance reason not to go with PCI-E.

 

[xsilver]

your gfx card is at best on par with a 7600GS which can be had for rather cheap now

personally I would wait till vista /r600/g80 ships in order to gauge the direction and price drops.

the actual pci-e bus is not so relevant, what is relevant is that there is no more value to be had in AGP (new) anymore
the 7800GS AGP is too bloody expensive!

 

[Conky]

Even I agree that AGP is dead but I have an X850XT AGP which does pretty decent in most games right now and isn't even a year old. My choice of the ASRock775-Dual and an E6400 is a poor man's interim solution allowing me to still use my old parts.

Plus, I am not satisfied at all with current motherboard choices for the Conroe. This interim solution gives me the chance to have a faster cpu(which won't hurt my gaming) while I wait for an appropriate mobo choice, an upgrade to a PCI-E videocard, DDR2 RAM, and most likely a PC&C power supply. $55 for the ASRock buys me some time.

 

[TriRy]

good input, i knew i could count on anandtech! i guess that is what im still looking for, that interim solution, with the same motherboard. i go to college and graduate and the computer world is completely different! looks like building your own computer isnt even the cheapest way to go anymore now that dell has complete computer systems for under $700 including flat panel monitors in some cases.

it seems to me there is a big struggle between hardware and software. what i mean is, i look around and see, 32bit applications and 64bit hardware articheture as well as dual core processors, and dual processor machines BUT which applications take advantage of <b>any</b> of this. do games? do OS's? server software? or is this new technology aimed for people who render video and are in music editing? should i just get a macbook and run windows AND osx ? too many decisions, i think i need a white board and a web diagram of where all this is going...

in the meantime, that ASRock is the best choice i've seen so far, thanks Beachboy!