Why are they pushing PCI-E so much?

[Pnoy02]

Don't make a freaking sense, I mean not everybody has the money to switch to a PCI-E mobo or upgrade every 6months or so, only the minority does that. The rest of us are in the AGP section yet the best cards for the value cards are PCI-E first then AGP late. They are ignoring the masses, I can understand about SLI technology but c'mon, the average guy aint gonna spend that much on a PC, especially since its benifits are for gaming only at super high res....

Oh well, to make it short, why ignore the masses? I understand PCI-Es architecture will be faster but at current no gain whatsoever, therefore, until they actually start to need PCI-E's 16lanes, its pointless.

 

[The Green Bean]

money

 

[TorxT3D]

oh just wait till they start dropping support on drivers for AGP. They'll all be prioritized for pcie and will ignore anything agp.

everyone says agp will last at least another year... im not buying that.
as fast as technology is progressing.. i wouldnt be surprised if it dies this summer.

all it takes is a phenomenal game that needs a pcie card to get everyone on their knees to buy one.

hell when tax season comes around ill be upgrading to pcie myself and by then itll have matured enough to be stable with higher performance with better drivers.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: TorxT3D
oh just wait till they start dropping support on drivers for AGP. They'll all be prioritized for pcie and will ignore anything agp.

everyone says agp will last at least another year... im not buying that.
as fast as technology is progressing.. i wouldnt be surprised if it dies this summer.

all it takes is a phenomenal game that needs a pcie card to get everyone on their knees to buy one.

hell when tax season comes around ill be upgrading to pcie myself and by then itll have matured enough to be stable with higher performance with better drivers.

Well, nVidia still supports the TNT2 with their drivers.
As for games, that would have to be one weird game to specifically require PCIe, since the performance difference is completely nonexistent, just like it is with AGP4 -> AGP8.

AGP will be around for a while, these companies are in it for the money, and there's far too big a market for AGP cards to give away to the competition, and there will be for some time yet.

 

[LTC8K6]

PCI-E is not really any faster than AGP4X at the moment and won't be for the forseeable future, unless you buy an SLI mobo and 2 PCI-E cards. If you have that kind of change to spare, you probably don't care anyway.

The only exception to this with a single card would be if you are into HDTV encoding, which might actually use some of PCI-E's extra bandwidth. Not many folks do that though.

As far as a game needing PCI-E's bandwidth, I think that is a long way off.

PCI-E cards still need power cords, so that advantage over AGP hasn't materialized.

On top of that, the benchmarks at Tech Report of the ATI X850 series cards tell me that SLI isn't really worth the money yet.

None of this really matters though. PCI-E is what we have gone to so, there is little point in arguing about it.

 

[Vee]

There's a simple technical reason for ATI's focus on PCIe. They made their new chipset specifically for PCIe. So they're late in engineering a suitable AGP interface. nVidia incorporated a 'bridge', so they will have an easier time to supply the market with AGP versions.

 

[Vegito]

you guys are talking about pcie as if it's only used for video, pcie scsi/raid cards will come and eventually everything else. Right now if you have multiple cards in your system, especially scsi/raid card, you may come close to maxing out your pci bus. Thats the whole reason of inventing pcie.. its not strictly for video, its for the whole pc overall

having more bandwidth allows you to hook more things to your pc..

 

[dullard]

Welcome (a couple weeks late) to Anandtech.

Originally posted by: Pnoy02
They are ignoring the masses, I can understand about SLI technology but c'mon, the average guy aint gonna spend that much on a PC, especially since its benifits are for gaming only at super high res....

Oh well, to make it short, why ignore the masses?

I think your view of the masses is massively incorrect. The masses DO NOT upgrade their video card. The masses buy a complete PC all at once. The masses buy a CPU, motherboard, video card, memory, and hard drive all together. Thus when the masses want a new computer it doesn't matter one bit if the video card is AGP or PCI-E since with whatever computer they buy, they will have a new motherboard which meets their needs/wants.

Then you have the minority. Much of Anandtech is the minority. We realize that in limited situations it is more cost effective to get rid of just one component and replace it with something better. We get the best video card we can afford which in virtually every case will work in whatever motherboard we already have.

Finally you have the very tiny insignificant minority barely even worth mentioning. These are the people you are worried about. These people want the best of the best and thus may need to change motherboards just to get a component which is 3% faster. These people are screwed over by the change to PCI-E. But there are so few of them, that companies don't bend over backwards for them and hamper their own profits and progress just to please a handful of people.

 

[LED]

{Puts on Motor Cap}

Hmmm I got 2 of pretty much the same cars but 1 is a 4 cylinder (PCI &AGP) and another 8 Cylinder (former 2 with PCIe)...Now I want to take passengers (Hardware) to a location the fastest, quickest and easiest way...which car should I load up and offer 1st?

 

[LTC8K6]

I doubt that the percentage of home computer users who are anywhere near maxing out PCI and AGP rises above 1%. I doubt it's even close to that.

LED, currently PCI-E does have more bandwidth than AGP, but we aren't even using all of AGP's bandwidth yet.

A good analogy would be that AGP is a Ford F150 and PCI-E is an F350, but we're only hauling one dishwasher, and we're not going to haul much more than that in the near future, so why do we need to pay for the F350?

It's pointless though. We are going to pay for PCI-E, and we won't be using it's capability. Just like AGP 8X.

 

[LED]

LED, currently PCI-E does have more bandwidth than AGP, but we aren't even using all of AGP's bandwidth yet

...Bandwith is as follows:
PCI
33MHz=133MBps

AGP
1X=66MBps
2X=533MBps
4X=1.1GBps
8X=2.2GBps

whereas PCIe is equivilant to 16X

CPU's are 100-133FSB=800-1.1GB and 133/266MHz+up to 2.1GBps then Memory's DDR PC66 to DDR266 is 4.3 GBps...so I don't see how PCI-e isn't any faster and why AGP's bandwith isn't being utilized...why would it have better performance over PCI?

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: TorxT3D
all it takes is a phenomenal game that needs a pcie card to get everyone on their knees to buy one.

The PCIE bus will likely not be taxed to anywhere near its maximum capacity until well after the standard has died out of the mainstream. Just like all the flavors of AGP.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: LED

LED, currently PCI-E does have more bandwidth than AGP, but we aren't even using all of AGP's bandwidth yet

...Bandwith is as follows:
PCI
33MHz=133MBps

AGP
1X=66MBps
2X=533MBps
4X=1.1GBps
8X=2.2GBps

whereas PCIe is equivilant to 16X

CPU's are 100-133FSB=800-1.1GB and 133/266MHz+up to 2.1GBps then Memory's DDR PC66 to DDR266 is 4.3 GBps...so I don't see how PCI-e isn't any faster and why AGP's bandwith isn't being utilized...why would it have better performance over PCI?

Graphics cards only have 64, 128, or 256 MB of RAM. 8X AGP is 2.2GB/sec. You can fill the entire onboard memory of a 256MB graphics card in ~150ms via 8X AGP. And once you load your data and textures, there's very little data that has to be passed back and forth to control what is displayed. For regular 'draw stuff on the screen' applications (like games), the extra bandwidth is pretty much useless. 4X AGP provided a slight improvement over 2X AGP, but anything beyond that is just overkill right now.

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
I doubt that the percentage of home computer users who are anywhere near maxing out PCI and AGP rises above 1%. I doubt it's even close to that.

LED, currently PCI-E does have more bandwidth than AGP, but we aren't even using all of AGP's bandwidth yet.

A good analogy would be that AGP is a Ford F150 and PCI-E is an F350, but we're only hauling one dishwasher, and we're not going to haul much more than that in the near future, so why do we need to pay for the F350?

It's pointless though. We are going to pay for PCI-E, and we won't be using it's capability. Just like AGP 8X.

thats fine then, dont buy it.. just wait for agp versions.. im pushing dual pcie in my office cuz we need sli cards.. other than that, all of our current pc are AGP anyway.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: LED

LED, currently PCI-E does have more bandwidth than AGP, but we aren't even using all of AGP's bandwidth yet

...Bandwith is as follows:
PCI
33MHz=133MBps

AGP
1X=66MBps
2X=533MBps
4X=1.1GBps
8X=2.2GBps

whereas PCIe is equivilant to 16X

CPU's are 100-133FSB=800-1.1GB and 133/266MHz+up to 2.1GBps then Memory's DDR PC66 to DDR266 is 4.3 GBps...so I don't see how PCI-e isn't any faster and why AGP's bandwith isn't being utilized...why would it have better performance over PCI?

Graphics cards only have 64, 128, or 256 MB of RAM. 8X AGP is 2.2GB/sec. You can fill the entire onboard memory of a 256MB graphics card in ~150ms via 8X AGP. And once you load your data and textures, there's very little data that has to be passed back and forth to control what is displayed. For regular 'draw stuff on the screen' applications (like games), the extra bandwidth is pretty much useless. 4X AGP provided a slight improvement over 2X AGP, but anything beyond that is just overkill right now.

Yep, that exactly why you aren't seeing a big difference between AGP 4X and 8X. Most of the graphic work is being done right on the card.

 

[LED]

Yep and AGP 4X @ the time assured that there would be plenty bandwith for the Vid cards and then we jumped to 8X when RAM on Vid cards were increasing...and now SLI is/will be available ...AGP speed was/is being utilized to it's max so in came 4X and 8X...with both someday being absolete in favor of PCI-e Hardware which I would want if my mobo can handle it.

 

[biostud]

Well you can still buy AGP cards, it's not like force you to shift. Not now anyways
They have to start somewhere for people to change.

 

[piasabird]

They can demand a higher price for PCI-E!

Follow the Money.

 

[Pnoy02]

Yeah, but why not AGP first or at the same time for card releases. Also, PCI-E is actually cheaper than the AGP versions, only difference is that you'll need to buy a mobo that supports PCI-E and big name prebuilts aren't just gonna roll over and start engineering PCI-E mobos when cheap top performing AGP mobos are around for cheaper, more availability and designing new tech like dell makes their own brands takes money. I can understand pushing PCI-E to mainstream but heck, floppy is still around aint it? with DVD burners out there, shouldn't CDs be obsolete? point is, the supposedly "technical advantage" PCI-E has over AGP is only on paper, games right now really aren't even pushing anything that takes half the power of an AGP 8X card, I mean half the power as put it on its knees. It doesn't make sense going for the money when the money is on the AGP masses, the ratio right now is probly 1000 - 1 of AGP to PCI, they're willing to make a $ over $$$$?

 

[biostud]

As far as I can see you can get lots of good cards for AGP, and in two years if you want the fastest videocard you will need a CPU/mboard upgrade as well to take advantage of it, so at that time you can go for PCIe. As far as I can see it's a nice transition, they need to have the hardware out before software is made to take advantage of it. I don't understand why it's a problem that they push new technology, you don't need to buy PCIe cards before you yourself seem to need it. PCIe will be just like AGP in a couple of years, before AGP there was PCI and VLB video cards, AGP wasn't needed first but later the bandwith was needed. It's just history repeating, and I don't see that many complaining about AGP cards today.

 

[LTC8K6]

We jumped to 8X AGP because they made us do it. We still aren't using it. Period.

It's the same reason there are FX5200's and R9200's with 256MB of ram and 8XAGP (along with other cards). It sounds good, but neither card is capable of using the ram nor do they need to be 8X AGP.

LED, why aren't 8X AGP cards any faster than 4X AGP cards? Or PCI-E 16X cards for that matter? When PCI-E cards came out, they were immediately tested against ther AGP brothers. They weren't any faster except where the PCI-E card had slighly higher clocked memory or core speeds. The PCI-E bus itself provided no speed advantage. Just like when 8X AGP came out and wasn't any faster than 4x AGP.

Numerous tests have shown this. It's because we are barely taxing AGP 4X currently. This is crystal clear to me.

BTW, I like PCI-E and will certainly go with it for my next system. I don't need it though, and the vast majority of computer users don't either.

It is not any faster or better than AGP, unless you want to shell out for an SLI system or you intend to encode HDTV video. That's a fact.

 

[daveshel]

Revenge for rambus.

 

[biostud]

It didn't matter to much when they changed to the 8xAGP as it was backwards compatible with 4xAGP. I still can't see what the problem is. If a person need a new videocard CPU/mboard upgrade it doesn't seem to be a problem to go for PCIe instead of AGP. If you only need a new videocard you can still buy an AGP card or if you only need a new mboard/CPU you can still buy AGP mboards.

I think we also need to remember that PCIe isn't only for videocards but also for other cards, and that in the long run the more bandwith will be needed. If you buy PCIe now because it will give a better performance you will be disapointed, if you buy it so you can also use the next generation videocards and other new cards coming for PCIe then it's fine.

 

[LED]

LED, why aren't 8X AGP cards any faster than 4X AGP cards? Or PCI-E 16X cards for that matter? When PCI-E cards came out, they were immediately tested against ther AGP brothers. They weren't any faster except where the PCI-E card had slighly higher clocked memory or core speeds. The PCI-E bus itself provided no speed advantage. Just like when 8X AGP came out and wasn't any faster than 4x AGP.

LTC8K6, I think you know why as well as Matthias99 answered that...The purpose of new Tech is to stay ahead of the game instead of bottlenecking. I mean just look @ the 100-133 PATA HD's which aren't necessary and aren't maxed out, then SATA comes along at the same speed but now we have NCQ and SATA300 which will be an improvement. I think we are all on the same page with minor differences in interpetation...

 

[pm]

Dullard has it right. The companies are making PCI-E cards first because that's what new PC's are shipping with. And the vast majority of people buy their video card along with the rest of the computer.