Gigabit over AGP?

[CZroe]

I've seen PCI to PCI bridges in Quantum3D's single-card dual Voodoo2 SLI setup.
I've seen PCI video cards adapted for AGP in ALL of 3dfx's AGP cards

I've seen PCI devices adapted for AGP in ATI's early AIW8500 (Firewire)
I've seen AGP video cards bridged as PCI Express devices in ATI's early PCI Express samples.

So what are the chances of a Gigbit AGP NIC? Even AGP1x has plenty of bandwidth, right? It could be a multifunction device (Firewire B, Gigabit

Many nForce owners do not need an AGP card for their fileservers and there is no other bus on their systems capable of fully utilizing a Gigabit card. It could be a way to rocket Gigabit into consumer PCs.

It would still be viable come PCI Express because once users upgrade to a PCI Express video card, they'll still have a free AGP slot (Although PCI Express is perfectly capable of providing 1000mbps).

Will it ever happen?

66MHz PCI to AGP bridge should work nicely...

 

[SithSolo1]

Uhhhh AGP = Accelerated Graphics port. It says nothing about being a FBIYPCHIP(Faster Bus If Your PCI Can't Handle It Port). Whether it would work or not I have no clue though I'd bet on "no". Then again I've never won a bet in my life so this would be a first.

 

[mechBgon]

The upcoming nVidia MCP-S1000 southbridge might be just what you want, with native gbE running directly to the Hypertransport bus, not PCI-bound. Still waiting for it, c'mon nVidia...

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: SithSolo1
Uhhhh AGP = Accelerated Graphics port. It says nothing about being a FBIYPCHIP(Faster Bus If Your PCI Can't Handle It Port). Whether it would work or not I have no clue though I'd bet on "no". Then again I've never won a bet in my life so this would be a first.

Uhh, I included an example. Firewire was included on an ATI AIW Radeon 8500DV card years ago. I've been told that AGP is very similar to PCI in many aspects. Also, remember that most early AGP cards were simply adapted PCI video chips.

 

[dexvx]

The Canterwood's CSA is an independant 266MB/sec link to the Northbridge.

 

[stevty2889]

it also looks like none of the motherboards coming out with PCI express will still have an agp port anyway..but as others have said, the CSA bus with the intel 875 chipset has a seperate bus for the onboard gigabit ethernet anyway.

 

[ViciouS]

Korean Prostatutes say that AGP = Agrivated Green Penis

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: ViciouS
Korean Prostatutes say that AGP = Agrivated Green Penis

I say that ViciouS = banned.

- M4H

 

[Jeff7]

PCI Express is on the way, which will make AGP seem a bit slow.
And you mentioned it...ok.

It would still be viable come PCI Express because once users upgrade to a PCI Express video card, they'll still have a free AGP slot (Although PCI Express is perfectly capable of providing 1000mbps).

Won't PCI Express motherboards be without an AGP slot? Or if they do still have one, there'd be more than one PCI Express slot. And by the time we get boards with PCI Express, I'd expect for Gigabit LAN to be built-in on more motherboards.

 

[kurtaotto]

Well, gigabit lan is already coming more common place on the high end boards anyway. Even though, I think the lack of domestic ethernet users around the world won't really be pushing manufacturers to be slotting gigabit lan onto every board, its likely to be common place within a few years, especially as setting up a home network becomes easier and more reliable.

 

[psyeudkev]

PCIexpress is meant to be scalable, if you look at the recent roadmaps for Intel, the boards probably won't have AGP but a PCIexpress x16 as replacement, and 'normal' PCIexpress x1 slots too.

I think there was an article here on AnandTech, PCIexpress = drooooool

 

[CZroe]

Ichinisan above was me accidentally posting with my brother's account. Anyway, I was specifically referring to it as an upgrade for older computers which otherwise do not have a bus capable of supporting full-speed Gigabit. The CSA bus can only be used with integrated Gigabit. The next nVidia chipset's Gigabit support will also be integrated. The PCI Express boards are not even out, so a PCI Express Gigabit card would not be an upgrade for today's boards.

For instance, my closet fileserver consist of a socket 423 i850 board (Intel D850GB with no audio or LAN) + slowest Williamette Pentium 4 ever made (Retail 1.3GHz), and 512MB RDRAM (Four RIMMs). What else would I do with this system? The 1.3GHz CPU was abysmal, but a file server doesn't need a high-performance CPU. I certainly wouldn't buy the latest nVidia or Intel board to replace this. The additional hardware will be 7 Western Digital Special Edition drives (1x100GB, 6x120GB), a Promise SuperTrak SX6000 6-channel RAID5 card with 256MB SDRAM cache and a GeForce2 MX200.

To make things worse, the i850 was shown to have a flaw restricting PCI bandwidth to a maximum somewhere around 80 to 120MB. I plan on configuring the OS so the 512MB system RAM compensates for the RAID controller on the PCI bus (Store large files while the PCI bus and HDDs catch up). The AGP bus would be perfect for a Gigabit card.

So basically, any Gigabit file server built with leftover hardware (As most home fileservers are) will need to alleviate PCI bandwidth. The RAID card and the Gigabit card will both hit the 133MB 33MHz PCI limitation alone and the type of system does not require an AGP video card (Most will just use the integrated video).

For older systems being converted to fileservers, AGP Gigabit may be the perfect upgrade...

 

[robg1701]

Via implemented a solution for their server orientated designs in the past that dropped a PCI-X bus off the AGP connection and forewent having AGP capability....so yes, i think it would be possible.

However, most PCI Express x16 graphics suporting chipets arent going to have an AGP bus it seems (only via so far is said to include both), so there isnt going to be as much scope for such a possability to warrant the expense id say.