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Topic: For those of you wanting to upgrade your AGP video card (Read 4877 times)
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Nebu
Terracotta Army
Posts: 17613
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Tom's Hardware discusses the NVidia GeForce 7800GSI thought this blurb was particularly helpful in deciding between staying with AGP and upgrading to PCIe We are often asked if graphics card makers will make another AGP card or why don't they make them anymore. The short answer is that upgrading to a PCIe platform offers benefits that AGP cannot deliver, which is why card vendors moved from AGP to PCIe designs in the first place.
The first comes in the form of bandwidth. The bandwidth of a basic x1 PCI link is 5 Gb/s, while 4 Gb/s or 80% of that bandwidth is actually used to transmit data. This is because PCI Express uses what is called 8-bit/10-bit encoding. This means that 8-bit data bytes are encoded into a 10-bit transmission, which maintains signal integrity. Also, PCIe is bi-directional, which means it can send one bit in each direction at the same time.
AGP does not share this functionality. While PCIe can send 250 MB/s per lane or 4 GB/s on x16 (in duplex 500 MB/s x 8 bit per byte = 4 GB/s), AGP 8X only can transfer 266 MB/s in PCI mode and a maximum of 2.1 GB/s isochronous operation mode with AGP writes. The actual or guaranteed bandwidth for AGP 3.0 is a calculation of the number of read or write transactions times the data size (32, 64, 128, or 256 bytes) divided by time with a maximum of 2.1 GB/s. Regardless of what mode in which it transfers the data, AGP is never as fast as a x16 PCIe solution.
The second limitation of the AGP 3.0 standard (AGP 8x) is power. All of the cards used in this review have extra four pin power sockets. The NVIDIA GeForce 7800GS and the ATI Radeon X850XTPE have one while the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra has two. The AGP 3.0 specifies power from the 3.3V, 5V, and 12V rails. The spec allowed for a maximum of 41.8W (6A from 3.3V, 2A from 5V, 1A from 12V = 41.8W, and an additional 1.24W could come from the 3.3V auxiliary at 0.375A).
By adding the four-pin connections, they extended the life of AGP cards as each supplied 6.5A or 110.5W from these right angle connections (12V + 5V or 17V x 6.5A = 110.5W). On the other hand, PCI Express can deliver 75W through the x16 connector and an additional 75W per six-pin connection. For those of you wishing to upgrade your graphics without having to rebuild a new box, this may be an option. While not as good as the PCIe systems, it will offer you a nice improvement.
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"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."
- Mark Twain
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I've definitely been thinking about a new GPU, though I probably need a new system. It's only the higher end stuff (EQ2 shadows for instance, I can run with Max Textures, though) that is slow.
AMD Barton 3000+, 1GB PC3200, 9800Pro 256MB DDR2 and whatnot.
I usually shy away from putting money into a dead-end, though. Tough to buy a new card when I'll have to buy another one next year if I rebuild my pc...I'd really like to get into some on-die memory controller cpu action soon!
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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My next mobo will not have AGP. My current Nforce2 board has been a trooper, but when I jump in hardware I try to jump as far as I can in one hop. I buckled and put a molex into my video card, but I'll not be so silly next time.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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Tom's Hardware discusses the NVidia GeForce 7800GSI thought this blurb was particularly helpful in deciding between staying with AGP and upgrading to PCIe We are often asked if graphics card makers will make another AGP card or why don't they make them anymore. The short answer is that upgrading to a PCIe platform offers benefits that AGP cannot deliver, which is why card vendors moved from AGP to PCIe designs in the first place.
That doesn't actually help explain anything, and it's good to see Tom's ignores the info on their own site which shows that there's only a minuscule difference in performance in games between AGP x4 and x8 -- in other words PCIe x16 it total overkill right now (but not necessarily in the future). And the bus power issue is just a packaging concern -- it doesn't change the power supply requirements for that GPU. There are no technical reasons why NVIDIA and ATI can not release their top-end cards (7800 GTX, X1900 ATM) in AGP forms -- both have PCIe to AGP bridge chips that they've used with other cards -- they just, for whatever reason, don't want to do that.
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Furiously
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7199
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There are no technical reasons why NVIDIA and ATI can not release their top-end cards (7800 GTX, X1900 ATM) in AGP forms -- both have PCIe to AGP bridge chips that they've used with other cards -- they just, for whatever reason, don't want to do that.
It couldn't be an economical one of selling their own chipset chips as well now could it?
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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There are no technical reasons why NVIDIA and ATI can not release their top-end cards (7800 GTX, X1900 ATM) in AGP forms -- both have PCIe to AGP bridge chips that they've used with other cards -- they just, for whatever reason, don't want to do that.
It couldn't be an economical one of selling their own chipset chips as well now could it? That only applies to people buying new motherboards and ATI is currently a minor player in the chipset market and has only recently gotten into the PCIe chipset game in a serious way so that wouldn't explain their actions over the previous year and a half or so. Intel, of course, first forced the issue for new motherboards on their side of things by saying "thou shalt move to PCIe" (and making their newest chipsets only support PCIe) but there are still millions of PCs out there with AGP slots in them and as people here have mentioned repeatedly the cost of building a new computer just to upgrade their video card from AGP to PCIe is a big turnoff. Edit: Fixed reference to ATI, they have both Intel CPU and AMD CPU chipsets
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« Last Edit: February 03, 2006, 06:47:05 PM by Trippy »
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Tale
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Posts: 8567
sıɥʇ ǝʞıן sʞןɐʇ
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Murgos
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7474
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Blah, it's still a $400.00 video card.
From long standing tradition my price point is $200 for a video card. The $200 card has always been within single digit percentage performance of the top of the line 4-5 hundred dollar cards. I've never regretted following that rule.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Trippy
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Posts: 23657
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Blah, it's still a $400.00 video card.
The street price should be around $299 (the MSRP is $349). From long standing tradition my price point is $200 for a video card. The $200 card has always been within single digit percentage performance of the top of the line 4-5 hundred dollar cards. I've never regretted following that rule.
The Tech Report has a more comprehensive review of the GPU including comparisons to the 6800 GS (though it's the PCIe version) which you can get for around $210 in AGP form. The performance difference between the two vary depending on the benchmark but the 7800 GS is usually at least 20% faster at typical resolutions.
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Murgos
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7474
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Your reading the charts wrong, the 7800 GS is the one towards the bottom thats highlighted, it's comparable to the 6800 GS not 20% better. The one at the top is the 7800 gtx 512M.
You are right that the top end cards are running 20 - 25% better, however noticable difference is still mostly non-existant. 65 fps with all bells and whistles vs 80 fps with all bells and whistles is an issue only to peen wavers.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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Your reading the charts wrong, the 7800 GS is the one towards the bottom thats highlighted, it's comparable to the 6800 GS not 20% better. The one at the top is the 7800 gtx 512M.
I think you are the one that's confused (or don't understand percentage increases). Here are some examples: Half-Life 2 Lost Coast 1600 x 1200 7800 GS 34.9 FPS 6800 GS 26.0 7800 GS performance improvement over 6800 GS = 34% F.E.A.R 1280 x 960 7800 GS 23.3 FPS 6800 GS 20.5 FPS Performance increase = 13.7% Battlefield 2 1920 x 1440 7800 GS 27.2 6800 GS 20.8 Performance increase = 31% You are right that the top end cards are running 20 - 25% better, however noticable difference is still mostly non-existant. 65 fps with all bells and whistles vs 80 fps with all bells and whistles is an issue only to peen wavers.
The top end cards are running at over twice the frame rates (i.e. over 100% increase) of the 7800 GS and 6800 GS in many cases. You seem to be confusing percentage increases with the actual number of frames per second that are increasing. This is what you orignally said: From long standing tradition my price point is $200 for a video card. The $200 card has always been within single digit percentage performance of the top of the line 4-5 hundred dollar cards. I've never regretted following that rule.
That's demonstrably false in any 3D intensive game as the charts on those pages show. I think what you are trying to say is that single digit frame rate increases (which may actually represent a 20% or more increase as a percentage) is not worth the extra money.
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Righ
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Posts: 6542
Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.
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That's was actually a pretty good report, and I found myself in agreement with the summary: The value comparison between the 7800 GS and some of NVIDIA's own current offerings is less flattering. At about $200, the GeForce 6800 GS boasts the same basic feature set as the 7800 GS without that much of a performance penalty. I'm not sure I'd pony up the extra $100-150 for a 7800 GS unless I were really serious about hanging on to my AGP system for quite a bit longer. And hanging on to that system starts to look foolhardy when you consider the PCI Express-based graphics options, such as the GeForce 7800 GT, a superior performer than the 7800 GS that's selling for about $300 at various online shops. That's the low end of the projected price range for the 7800 GS. The grass is indeed greener in PCI Express pastures. NVIDIA says it has no plans to produce a GeForce 7800 GS for PCI Express, and we can see the logic if the pricing looks like this.
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The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
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Murgos
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Posts: 7474
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Your reading the charts wrong, the 7800 GS is the one towards the bottom thats highlighted, it's comparable to the 6800 GS not 20% better. The one at the top is the 7800 gtx 512M.
I think you are the one that's confused (or don't understand percentage increases). Here are some examples:  I don't think it gets any clearer. The thing about statistics is that they don't mean anything. You're trying to show me that a 2.8fps improvement is worth upwards of $200. I just will not buy that. Oh, look! That line goes farther! Shiney.
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« Last Edit: February 04, 2006, 06:45:37 AM by Murgos »
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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Your reading the charts wrong, the 7800 GS is the one towards the bottom thats highlighted, it's comparable to the 6800 GS not 20% better. The one at the top is the 7800 gtx 512M.
I think you are the one that's confused (or don't understand percentage increases). Here are some examples:  I don't think it gets any clearer. That's one artifical benchmark that has a measurement that has nothing to do with FPS. You've ignored the benchmarks I posted that involve real games. The thing about statistics is that they don't mean anything. You're trying to show me that a 2.8fps improvement is worth upwards of $200. I just will not buy that. Oh, look! That line goes farther! Shiney.
I'm not disagreeing with your general premise that's it not worth buying a top end video card -- I'm disagreeing with your claim that a $500 video card only offers single digit *percentage* increases over a $200 video card. Even your artificial benchmark shows that is not the case (well except for the AIW X1900, I think there's something wrong with that number).
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Murgos
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7474
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Fine, I'll concede the pedantic point of single digit % improvement (with the caveat of in SOME instances) but I'm keeping the no no ticable difference except to peen wavers and not worth 200 - 300 dollars part.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Lt.Dan
Terracotta Army
Posts: 758
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I've been looking at these cards too. newegg has some pretty good deals but I'm note sure I can trust the reviews there - very moley sounding.
One minor gripe though. I can't believe that with all the tech-geckiness that goes on with graphics cards, average fps is still used as a measure of game performance.
I don't care if I average 30fps. What I care about is hitting a new area and getting 5fps for even a fraction of a second. What's wrong with showing some distributions of fps, compare the lower quartile of fps or even bottom 10th percentile.
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MrHat
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7432
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
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I've been looking at these cards too. newegg has some pretty good deals but I'm note sure I can trust the reviews there - very moley sounding.
One minor gripe though. I can't believe that with all the tech-geckiness that goes on with graphics cards, average fps is still used as a measure of game performance.
I don't care if I average 30fps. What I care about is hitting a new area and getting 5fps for even a fraction of a second. What's wrong with showing some distributions of fps, compare the lower quartile of fps or even bottom 10th percentile.
I'd like to see something that measure that as well? Mayhaps Trippy can enlighten us? I bet it's something that's benchmarked all the time, we just don't know the name of it.
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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One minor gripe though. I can't believe that with all the tech-geckiness that goes on with graphics cards, average fps is still used as a measure of game performance.
I don't care if I average 30fps. What I care about is hitting a new area and getting 5fps for even a fraction of a second. What's wrong with showing some distributions of fps, compare the lower quartile of fps or even bottom 10th percentile.
I'd like to see something that measure that as well? Mayhaps Trippy can enlighten us? I bet it's something that's benchmarked all the time, we just don't know the name of it. Some games like UT2003/2004 have built-in benchmarking tools that will report min/avg/max FPS but the general purpose way to get this sort of information is to use FRAPS. For example, HardOCP is a site that uses FRAPs to benchmark games/video cards as you can see here: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODg1
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MrHat
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7432
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
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Heh, as I was reading your post, I remembered a site that has graphs of FPS/time that show the min/maxs and how long it takes to settle out. That was the site.
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