When will we see AGP GF7800 and R1800 cards?

[imported_jediknight]

Topic says it all.

 

[Ricemarine]

We've been abandoned.

Oh well.

 

[Penth]

a decent PCI-e board costs like 20-30% of these cards, even less in the case of a GTX or GTX512. If your old AGP setup is any good, just sell it and the difference spent for the new motherboard is very little.

 

[Some1ne]

Yeah, AGP is going away, you guys had to get abandoned sooner or later, and the writing's been on the wall for some time now.

 

[AmdInside]

I saw the train leaving a while back so I upgraded to a PCI-E nForce4 mobo. Sort of wish I didn't have to because currently, my PCI slots are all used up so I can't really add any additional cards.

 

[ribbon13]

The GTX512 is pretty close to saturating 6X worth of AGP bandwidth. It's time we take AGP out back and end her suffering quickly.

PCI-express is like the ultimate warrior man. Does everything. Soon PCI will dissappear and there will only be PCI-e 1x and 4x slots for the masses of peripherals. And when PCI-e 16x isn't enough for GPUs/other bandwidth suckers, chipsets will start supporting 32x slots. This has been a needed change in PC architecture for years now. This is one robust bus. Welcome it my friends. Nothing before it compares: ISA, EISA, VESA, PCI, PCI-X... nothing was as well thought out and so agile as PCI-express.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: Penth
a decent PCI-e board costs like 20-30% of these cards, even less in the case of a GTX or GTX512. If your old AGP setup is any good, just sell it and the difference spent for the new motherboard is very little.

See, for those of us still on Socket A (oddly enough, my laptop has S939 - go figure!), this is more like "spend $150 for a good mobo, $250 for a good CPU, and $200 for new memory". An AGP video card neatly solves the upgrade problem, rather than turning it into a nightmare.

Interestingly, lower-end machines actually do make good video card upgrade candidates - after all, you just push the settings up far enough, and CPU limitations go away because of video card limitations.

Apparently, though, Diamond Multimedia is going to be bringing out an X1800 variant with an AGP bridge, so I wouldn't count AGP out yet. See this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27657

-Erwos

 

[Some1ne]

And when PCI-e 16x isn't enough for GPUs/other bandwidth suckers, chipsets will start supporting 32x slots.

How? The physical length of a PCI-E slot is directly proportional to the number of lanes assigned to it, and a 16x is already fairly long. Wouldn't a 32x just be too long to be practical?

See, for those of us still on Socket A (oddly enough, my laptop has S939 - go figure!), this is more like "spend $150 for a good mobo, $250 for a good CPU, and $200 for new memory"

No, you can reuse the memory.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: erwos
-clip
See, for those of us still on Socket A (oddly enough, my laptop has S939 - go figure!), this is more like "spend $150 for a good mobo, $250 for a good CPU, and $200 for new memory". An AGP video card neatly solves the upgrade problem, rather than turning it into a nightmare.
-clip-

-Erwos

$72 - AsRock 939Dual-SATA2
$196 - AMD OSA146BNBOX

You were saying?

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: Some1ne
How? The physical length of a PCI-E slot is directly proportional to the number of lanes assigned to it, and a 16x is already fairly long. Wouldn't a 32x just be too long to be practical?

Not really. Have you ever seen PCI-X

 

[meatfestival]

how many owners of agp motherboards have cpus that would be fast enough to use a 7800 or x1800 without bottlenecking? and out of those people, how many would actually buy one? IMO, nowhere near enough for it to be worthwhile for ATI & Nvidia.

 

[Some1ne]

Not really. Have you ever seen PCI-X

Not really, but a direct overhead shot might be more illustrative than one taken from the corner of the board at a low angle. It's hard to tell if those slots are really substantially longer than standard PCI, and they really don't look any larger than a x16 PCI-E slot. Here's a nice shot:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage...20ATX%20AMD%20Motherboard%20-%20Retail

Note how the x16 PCI-E slots already appear to take up about 50% of the length of the board, and almost immediately behind them you have that crazy fan contraption. How would you double the length of those slots?

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: Some1ne

And when PCI-e 16x isn't enough for GPUs/other bandwidth suckers, chipsets will start supporting 32x slots.

How? The physical length of a PCI-E slot is directly proportional to the number of lanes assigned to it, and a 16x is already fairly long. Wouldn't a 32x just be too long to be practical?

See, for those of us still on Socket A (oddly enough, my laptop has S939 - go figure!), this is more like "spend $150 for a good mobo, $250 for a good CPU, and $200 for new memory"

No, you can reuse the memory.

Not everyone on Socket A went with PC3200 as it wasnt necessary in most cases. Most Socket A processors used PC2100 or PC2700. I think only 2 of the bartons used PC3200.

If you didnt buy at the right time or didnt overclock, you may be stuck with pc2100 or pc2700 and in which case, you will most likely want to buy new stuff.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
$72 - AsRock 939Dual-SATA2
$196 - AMD OSA146BNBOX
You were saying?

You and I obviously have amazingly different ideas of "good". Do you really think it makes sense to go from a AXP 2500+ to an A64 3200+? Methinks not. It's simply not that much of a jump (a whole 300 mhz!). I don't overclock, by the way. Buying a non-DC CPU is a total waste of money on the desktop, too.

As for the mobo, it's hardly all that good. Might be an OK platform for the wife, but it's never going to scale with me (I am, however, a chipset bigot). You also managed to leave out the cost of RAM. In any event, it's still $450 just so I can buy a new video card.

Of course, the reality is, I'm using a Shuttle SN41 V2, so grabbing an SN25P is going to immediately jack me to $400, not including CPU or anything else. Perhaps that's my own fault in a way, but at least for my situation, an AGP video card makes the most sense.

-Erwos

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: ribbon13
$72 - AsRock 939Dual-SATA2
$196 - AMD OSA146BNBOX
You were saying?

You and I obviously have amazingly different ideas of "good". Do you really think it makes sense to go from a AXP 2500+ to an A64 3200+? Methinks not. It's simply not that much of a jump (a whole 300 mhz!). I don't overclock, by the way. Buying a non-DC CPU is a total waste of money on the desktop, too.

As for the mobo, it's hardly all that good. Might be an OK platform for the wife, but it's never going to scale with me (I am, however, a chipset bigot). You also managed to leave out the cost of RAM. In any event, it's still $450 just so I can buy a new video card.

Of course, the reality is, I'm using a Shuttle SN41 V2, so grabbing an SN25P is going to immediately jack me to $400, not including CPU or anything else. Perhaps that's my own fault in a way, but at least for my situation, an AGP video card makes the most sense.

-Erwos

Go look up some benchmarks for an A64 3200+ vs an AXP 2500+ (why don't you go Intel if you think you can judge performance by clock frequency?)
Go look at the AT review of the ASRock board and see how well it "scales" for you
You can reuse PC2700 in an A64 setup without much of a performance hit.

I thought you were making a comment on how it costs too much... now you have a solution and you're complaining?

 

[dguy6789]

You are forgetting that an Athlon 64 is WAY faster than an Athlon XP clock for clock. To be equal to an Athlon 64 3200+ you would likely need to clock an Athlon XP to 2.6-2.7Ghz and that is just not going to happen.

There would be a very noticable increase in computing performance going from an Athlon XP 3200+ to an Athlon 64 3000+ in just about any application.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Go look up some benchmarks for an A64 3200+ vs an AXP 2500+ (why don't you go Intel if you think you can judge performance by clock frequency?)
Go look at the AT review of the ASRock board and see how well it "scales" for you
You can reuse PC2700 in an A64 setup without much of a performance hit.

The question is not whether the A64 is not faster than the AXP - the question is whether it's $200 faster. I am not of the opinion that it is, at least for my usage patterns. And, if my current CPU is fine, why should I be forced to upgrade it for a video card purchase? You're getting hung up on me rejecting a $450 configuration, and missing my real point.

(FYI, taking personal swipes at people is usually considered immature.)

I've read the review of the ASRock board, and was frankly unimpressed. It's short on SATA connectors (only 3?), only has one SATA2 connector, doesn't have gigabit ethernet, doesn't have Firewire, and doesn't have enough PCIe x1 slots. I also don't trust ALi/ULi or whatever they're calling themselves these days. You are most certainly getting what you're paying for, and a board with the features _I have right now_ is going to be closer to $130-$150. Sure, it's got that "future CPU slot", but who knows how that's really going to pan out?

As for PC2700, get real. No one puts PC2700 in their boxes these days. In any event, when Socket M2 rolls around in a few months, it'll be worthless anyways.

The point remains that $400-$600 is a lot to spend to be _able_ to _buy_ a new $200 video card (eg, 6800GS). Don't get hung up about the exact cost of upgrading an entire system - the idea is that I _shouldn't have to_.

-Erwos

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Go look up some benchmarks for an A64 3200+ vs an AXP 2500+ (why don't you go Intel if you think you can judge performance by clock frequency?)
Go look at the AT review of the ASRock board and see how well it "scales" for you
You can reuse PC2700 in an A64 setup without much of a performance hit.

The question is not whether the A64 is not faster than the AXP - the question is whether it's $200 faster. I am not of the opinion that it is, at least for my usage patterns. And, if my current CPU is fine, why should I be forced to upgrade it for a video card purchase? You're getting hung up on me rejecting a $450 configuration, and missing my real point.

(FYI, taking personal swipes at people is usually considered immature.)

I've read the review of the ASRock board, and was frankly unimpressed. It's short on SATA connectors (only 3?), only has one SATA2 connector, doesn't have gigabit ethernet, doesn't have Firewire, and doesn't have enough PCIe x1 slots. I also don't trust ALi/ULi or whatever they're calling themselves these days. You are most certainly getting what you're paying for, and a board with the features _I have right now_ is going to be closer to $130-$150. Sure, it's got that "future CPU slot", but who knows how that's really going to pan out?

As for PC2700, get real. No one puts PC2700 in their boxes these days. In any event, when Socket M2 rolls around in a few months, it'll be worthless anyways.

The point remains that $400-$600 is a lot to spend to be _able_ to _buy_ a new $200 video card (eg, 6800GS). Don't get hung up about the exact cost of upgrading an entire system - the idea is that I _shouldn't have to_.

-Erwos

It seemed like you were making your statement about how much faster it was based on "It's simply not that much of a jump (a whole 300 mhz!)."
I'm saying look at performance charts to decide if it's worth it, not the clockspeed.
If you're actually looking at the performance difference, why mention the clockspeed to try to prove your point that it's not worth it?
I didn't mean the Intel comment as a personal attack, just as something to prove my point that clockspeed is largely irrelevant. I'm sorry.

You didn't mention any specific features you wanted and I think the features set on the ASRock is pretty impressive for the price.

If you're connecting more than 4 SATA harddrives, need gigabit ethernet for some reason, and want firewire then yeah it's not the board for you.
It is however a great solution to what seemed to be your problem of a CPU upgrade and AGP card. (At least that's what it seemed like your issue was)

Check out what kind of performance differences you're looking at between PC2300 and PC3000/PC3200 in the memory matrix thread and look at the FPS differences in the real world tests (that's what matters afterall).
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y

Not enough to justify getting new ram. PC2700 will work just fine for A64. Yeah, if you're buying a new computer then my all means get PC3200 but you don't need to do it to get a good performance out of A64.

Why shouldn't you have to upgrade certain parts of your computer to use newer products? That's the way it's alway been.

 

[Rage187]

Someone posted a link in the video forums to where Diamond is selling 1800XT's in AGP form factor.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Rage187
Someone posted a link in the video forums to where Diamond is selling 1800XT's in AGP form factor.

Yeah, Erwos posted the link in this thread too.

 

[MustISO]

Xbitlabs has the story as well. I just hope it forces Nvidia based card makers to do the same, I'd love to have a 7800GT right now.

 

[AmdInside]

Haven't checked their website but I am pretty sure its a fake. DiamondMM which used to be Best Data, did not actually manufacture their own graphic cards (like Asus, MSI etc.). They would rebadge other companies graphic cards. Of course, this may have changed. I am not sure. But I still really doubt they actually have an AGP x1800 board since no one else claims to have one.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: Penth
a decent PCI-e board costs like 20-30% of these cards, even less in the case of a GTX or GTX512. If your old AGP setup is any good, just sell it and the difference spent for the new motherboard is very little.

See, for those of us still on Socket A (oddly enough, my laptop has S939 - go figure!), this is more like "spend $150 for a good mobo, $250 for a good CPU, and $200 for new memory". An AGP video card neatly solves the upgrade problem, rather than turning it into a nightmare.

Interestingly, lower-end machines actually do make good video card upgrade candidates - after all, you just push the settings up far enough, and CPU limitations go away because of video card limitations.

Apparently, though, Diamond Multimedia is going to be bringing out an X1800 variant with an AGP bridge, so I wouldn't count AGP out yet. See this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27657

-Erwos

Agreed. I have a 2.8 Northwood. That thing is still very powerful. But the only S478 board with PCI-E is crap and costs $120. That just aint worth it. So yeah, I do believe AGP shouldn't be counted out yet