PCI Express cards

MunkyHed

Which is better? I'm goin building a new system for myself and i'm wondering is it worth the hassle trying to get a new socket T board, it'll be for gaming so i'll have to get DDR2, SATA drive etc. Someone told me not to bother as the new boards are using PCI express. I was gonna use an ATI X800 pro.

The question is, is PCI express much better than AGP 8X and would it be worth it in the long run.

Akula

If anything pci-express is slightly slower. Although many say that it is probably due to driver issues. Framerates in doom 3 & the like are slightly slower at the moment but many say thats because graphics cards drivers and games makers haven't actually oprtimised their wares for the wider bandwidth yet. Probably better as time goes on.

Even if it never matched in performance, I'd be wary about buying an end of line system from the perspective that you could find your upgrade options closed in the future. Its looking like the LGA slot will be shortlived anyway (thanks to the new 64bit extension p4's) but having the pci express slots makes life easier.

MunkyHed

Ya it looks like i'll stay with what i know, i'd like to see some benchmarkings of a PCIe card versus an AGP, i'll have a look for one. Games upgrade pretty fast these days to optimise compatibility with hardware, surely the next gen games will utilise the bandwidth offered by PCIe and blow our minds once again.

Akula

I think anandtech or tomshardware had some. Just do a search. Basically AGP was winning by about a 5% or less margin at the moment. Supposadly the gap has narrowed with the newer catalyst drivers from ATI and in the long run it should turn the corner.

Personally I'd go with pci-express.

MunkyHed

Just saw some good benchmarks on motherboards.org, nothin between the 2 technologies. I may wait a while and wait til i see some graphics cards come out that fully utilise the PCIe system, they'll be savage yokes i'd say!

Venom

PCI-express at the moment seems to be nothing more than a white elephant. Its got all the right stuff to blow AGP based systems away but it dosent. There has been very slow uptake on pci-express due to lack of cards and low resuslts. Depending on what web sites you go to there is a view that 8x agp based cards and mobos are not even close to hitting the bandwight limit so upgrading to them at the moment just for a faster gfk card is pointless.

netman

It will probably take a year or so for the new technologies to mature and become more mainstream. If you're building a PC right now, I'd recommend you to stick with old and proven. Not only will you have less problems to face, but you'll also get better performance for less money.

DDR-II suffers from high latencies, so in reality it doesn't perform as well as DDR. It has a lot more potential to grow, and as speeds get higher the gap will grow in favor of DDR-II. Right now that's not the case.

PCI-express is the next evolutionary step for expansion/graphics cards, however there are no graphics cards out there to take advantage of the PCI-E bus. In fact, all the current latest and greatest PCI-E graphics cards use a "bridge" to translate PCI-express into AGP. ATI have this bridge built into the graphics chip, and Nvidia use a separate onboard chip. So it's not surprising that PCI-express graphics cards are performing worse than AGP ones, since they're actually doing extra work.

There are a few things you can do to make your purchase more future-proof.
You could get an ATX/BTX compatibile case and power supply. It usually just means replacing one panel. Have a look at Lian-li cases and OCZ power supplies. Also, get a SATA hard drive, and if you want a SATA DVD-RW or CD-RW.

If you're sticking with Intel, socket 478 is still very much around, and i865 and i875 are very mature chipsets that are performing strong.

Akula

Remember that pci express isn't just for graphics cards.... replacing pci aswell. Lots of potential there as the bandwidth on PCI is tiny and there is a lot of potential there for improvements.

In fact, all the current latest and greatest PCI-E graphics cards use a "bridge" to translate PCI-express into AGP. ATI have this bridge built into the graphics chip, and Nvidia use a separate onboard chip. So it's not surprising that PCI-express graphics cards are performing worse than AGP ones, since they're actually doing extra work.

Umm not completely true. Yes Nvidia are using a bridge, but ATI's new x series cards are natively designed for pci express.