Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Originally posted by: RussianSensation
Originally posted by: DerelictDev
Bleh let AGP die and this is from someone who currently has AGP. Its an outdated socket and ill upgrade as well sooner or later.
I agree AGP should die; but after G70 and R520. At that point any current system will become too slow for next generation videocards. Right now top P4 and A64 systems with aGP are perfectly fine for G70 and R520.
Why are people not screaming like this to kill off IDE? SATA to IDE is the same performance difference as going from AGP to PCI-E (when not using SLI).
Because SATA drives are being churned out now and old school IDE drives are warehoused by the millions because they have been produced the same for the last several years (7200 rpms), thus remain dirt cheap and will for a while. Also, saying the performace difference between IDE and SATA is not noticable might be true, unless you have a MB that supports a 10000 RPM, like the raptor. The difference is extreme in games and almost everything else. I boot from cold to full in under 5 seconds, my 7200 rpm on my old system took literally 40 seconds, most of this is due to the better HD.
For Nvidia to cater to the AGP users in their highest end cards of this generation, they would have to manufacture, package, test, make drivers for, and distribute them. This would drive up the cost of PCIe cards and vendors will eventually miscalculate stock on one or the other, driving up prices further.
Also, most techie believe the PCIe cards will benefit more from an increase in memory, certain tweaks in the drivers, and possibly the opening of 32 pipes over any AGP counterpart. If manufacturers had to worry about differing levels of performance between identicle cards, they very well might hold off on any tech upgrade that did this and simply wait for the next gen when everyone is PCIe compliant.
People who have very cutting edge systems with a socket 745 A64 are pretty rare and many of those were warned repeatedly that they should go 939 just so they could either have a PCIe MB or the option to get one cheap later and keep their old CPU. These were the same people who ridiculed everyone else and bragged that they saved $50 over the equivalent 939 CPU and MB and that their 745 was slightly faster then the equivalent rated 939 A64.
Most people who would benefit from this generation of vid card already have a CPU that can go into a inexpensive PCIe board and they also already have the correct ram to use with it. People with high end propriatary systems already have PCIe slots or they have a system that would be bottlenecked by this gen anyways.
All Nvidia and ATI would accomplish by releasing AGP variants on this generation would be to turn an initial larger profit and then slowly bleed money over the transition period from AGP to PCIe. Better to force those who want this gen to go PCIe now and concentrate on making just one card for each price range and a easier unified driver code. They would make more money over the long run by forcing AGP to die ASAP.
The old PCI to AGP was a total pain for manufacturers and consumers. People were buying propriatory compaqs and the like 3 years into the AGP life cycle that came with PCI cards or integrated graphics with only a PCI option and they were looking at more money to by a older PCI card then a newer gen AGP card. PCIe is here to stay, so let AGP R.I.P.