8800 AGP for old computers

The only AGP systems that can use the power of an 8800GT will be those running very high clock speeds.

I'm running an Athlon 64 x2 @ 2.8GHz PCI-E and it is NOT fast enough to properly drive my 8800GT.
If I reduce my standard 8800GT clocks by 20%, it makes almost no difference to the in game performance. Reducing the clock speeds by 50% gets a big performance drop so it seems that at around 80% of its default clock speed is good enough for my A64x2 @ 2.8GHz.
If I increase the clocks by 20%, the performance difference is negligible, as in practically zero so its pointless clocking my 8800GT !

My 8800GT (standard GPU clocks of 625/1566) has been voltmodded and will run stable at 820/1952 but, for example, it makes no difference (less than 1%) in Crysis at 1360x768 res unless I use a higher res.
Sadly higher res gives lower performance, just not as low as it would have been and is still unusable.

To get more from my 8800GT, I will need to get a fast C2D system which is exactly what I am doing in the next few weeks because of this.
My intention is to get an E4500 or 8400 and clock the nads off it in an X38 motherboard
Click to expand...
Isn't it the video card the one that does all the graphics processing?
 
Nenu said:
The only AGP systems that can use the power of an 8800GT will be those running very high clock speeds.

I'm running an Athlon 64 x2 @ 2.8GHz PCI-E and it is NOT fast enough to properly drive my 8800GT.
If I reduce my standard 8800GT clocks by 20%, it makes almost no difference to the in game performance. Reducing the clock speeds by 50% gets a big performance drop so it seems that at around 80% of its default clock speed is good enough for my A64x2 @ 2.8GHz.
If I increase the clocks by 20%, the performance difference is negligible, as in practically zero so its pointless clocking my 8800GT !

My 8800GT (standard GPU clocks of 625/1566) has been voltmodded and will run stable at 820/1952 but, for example, it makes no difference (less than 1%) in Crysis at 1360x768 res unless I use a higher res.
Sadly higher res gives lower performance, just not as low as it would have been and is still unusable.

To get more from my 8800GT, I will need to get a fast C2D system which is exactly what I am doing in the next few weeks because of this.
My intention is to get an E4500 or 8400 and clock the nads off it in an X38 motherboard :)
Click to expand...

excellent response. we do such a disservice to our fellow enthusiasts by just making a comment and linking a benchmark. this is an example of real world, first hand experience that reveals so much more about the hardware.
 
isai95 said:
Isn't it the video card the one that does all the graphics processing?
Click to expand...

This explanation isn't very deep, I'll try and find some links that may help...

It's a combination of many things. Yes, the video card processes graphics but it must be fed by your CPU. I'm sure you've heard the term "bottleneck", this occurs when one of your components can't keep up with another one. If your CPU isn't fast enough to feed the video card, then the full potential of your video card won't be realized.

silent-circuit said:
...
Click to expand...

Come on, thats just rude. I'm sure there are plenty of things you don't know about.
 
AGP still is fast.
AGP 8x vs PCIe 16x is not universes a part!
What if we had AGP 16x can we get the same speeds?
Is it like USB 1.1 vs USB 2.0 difference? I don't think so.

Hard drives for instance, we had the regular PCI bus with a max bandwidth of 133MB/s, now we have like 500MB/s and still there is no hard drive that has a constant transfer rate more the 50MB/s and Max transfer rate of 120MB/s even SCSI, unless you have a bunch of hard drives together in raid 0, but still not every body has a raid 0. Most people use only one hard drive.
 
I want someone to show me NUMBERS, that AGP is doing well.

No one has proven that AGP is still doing "well" in the market.

Someone show me numbers.


Edit:
And you might as well just upgrade to a damn PCIE board. Your going to end up doing it anyways. might as well get it done.

Hell, if you have a 939 chip, just upgrade to a PCIE board. you can still use the same chip, ram, whatever from your old 939 board. And guess what. you now have a huge choice in vid cards.
 
Yes it's true that there are a great many AGP systems out there. However, it is also true that the majority of those are using very very old CPUs that would kill any advantage of an enthusiast-grade AGP card.

Let's face it, if you've got an AGP slot, your CPU can't be that great. Even a 3.8GHz P4 is a hunk of junk compared to even a moderate Core 2, and the S939 end-of-the-road isn't that much better. That being said, if you _do_ have one of the best CPUs of last generation, PCIe is probably just a motherboard swap away. (I.e. an LGA775 P4 can easily find a PCIe board for itself, same for S939. S754 and S478 can get PCIe too, though its rare now.)

There are options open to move to PCIe for just about anyone, and they don't cost much. If you aren't an enthusiast, then you dont need an 8800. If you ARE an enthusiast, then it is time to move on to PCIe.

I really do not see a purpose for AGP any longer at the enthusiast level. PCIe is several years old now and a cheap upgrade path is available to anyone with a CPU made in the last 4 years.
 
[RIP]Zeus;1031972658 said:
I want someone to show me NUMBERS, that AGP is doing well.

No one has proven that AGP is still doing "well" in the market.

Someone show me numbers.
Click to expand...

Show me numbers that its not.

At least we can assume that ATI and Nvidia are not releasing cards to dead market. They know better.
 
AGP is outdate and obselete due to the fact that AGP is a dead end platform that is not going to be supported for the next 3 years or something with high end video cards, thats the fact yes they make AGP cards now and then but it's pretty obvious that PCI-E is the dominant force it is not expensive and in fact would end up saving you money in the long run, why for other then the lack of $350 people don't upgrade is beyond me.i mean really an x1950pro AGP would get beaten by it PCI-E cousin for the same price not to mention it wouldn't surprise me if an 8600GT PCI-E is better then an x1950pro.

it's just why defend the AGP? it's old and antiquated you can't say its not obsolete you are only fooling yourself if you believe that.
 
isai95 said:
Once Nvidia see that ATI is selling their HD 3850 agp with great success, I bet that they would get theirs in the market also. My P4 3.0ghz works just fine and serves me good for what I use it. Why would I pay $1,000 for upgrading when I could pay less than $200.00 for the new HD 3850 AGP and play the newest games like COD2, COD3, ARMY etc, @ at least 1280 x 1024?

It doesn't have to be the 8800 series, it could be the newest series, I just used the 8800 to put an example.
Click to expand...

I feel the EXACT same way!

(see sig for machine info.... come on, it would benefit GREATLY from an 8800gt say)

instead, I'll be upgrading my 1950pro to the 3850 as soon as its released....

btw, whats the release date on the agp 3850? will there be both 256 and 512mb versions?
 
PsychoFanatic said:
AGP is outdate and obselete due to the fact that AGP is a dead end platform that is not going to be supported for the next 3 years or something with high end video cards, thats the fact yes they make AGP cards now and then but it's pretty obvious that PCI-E is the dominant force it is not expensive and in fact would end up saving you money in the long run, why for other then the lack of $350 people don't upgrade is beyond me.i mean really an x1950pro AGP would get beaten by it PCI-E cousin for the same price not to mention it wouldn't surprise me if an 8600GT PCI-E is better then an x1950pro.

it's just why defend the AGP? it's old and antiquated you can't say its not obsolete you are only fooling yourself if you believe that.
Click to expand...

No one's forcing you to buy AGP cards. Buy all the PCI-e cards you want, if people are too lazy or determined to keep their AGP platforms, then let them, however unbeneficial it may be. That's their prerogative, not yours. :rolleyes:
 
PsychoFanatic said:
AGP is outdate and obselete due to the fact that AGP is a dead end platform that is not going to be supported for the next 3 years or something with high end video cards, thats the fact yes they make AGP cards now and then but it's pretty obvious that PCI-E is the dominant force it is not expensive and in fact would end up saving you money in the long run, why for other then the lack of $350 people don't upgrade is beyond me.i mean really an x1950pro AGP would get beaten by it PCI-E cousin for the same price not to mention it wouldn't surprise me if an 8600GT PCI-E is better then an x1950pro.

it's just why defend the AGP? it's old and antiquated you can't say its not obsolete you are only fooling yourself if you believe that.
Click to expand...

You actually cant say its obsolete if its still in use and cards are still being made for it look the definition of obsolete up sometime...
 
isai95 said:
Once Nvidia see that ATI is selling their HD 3850 agp with great success, I bet that they would get theirs in the market also. My P4 3.0ghz works just fine and serves me good for what I use it. Why would I pay $1,000 for upgrading when I could pay less than $200.00 for the new HD 3850 AGP and play the newest games like COD2, COD3, ARMY etc, @ at least 1280 x 1024?

It doesn't have to be the 8800 series, it could be the newest series, I just used the 8800 to put an example.
Click to expand...

The market is not big enough for 2 high performing AGP videocards. Ati arrived before so Nvidia doesn't bother to develop a new design just to sell a few hundreds boards more. Also don't forget that a high performance videocard needs a fast CPU to shine; I am pretty sure the difference between for ex. a gts and 3850 with a single core P4 or AMD is very low due to CPU limitations.
 
Blue Falcon said:
No, there just simply isn't a need to compete. It's technology that was obselete over three years ago. NVIDIA would probably LOSE more money developing and producing the card than it would make on sales at this point. I'm quite honestly surprised that ATI is actually going to make a 38xx AGP card. :eek:

NVIDIA made their last real foray into the performance AGP market with the 7800GS cards, although Gainward did make a few special 7900 AGP cards.
Click to expand...

7900 came in an AGP GS version... the best card was the XFX 7950GT for agp (they were the only ones that did it).
 
isai95 said:
There are plenty of AGP computer users that will benefit of a killer 8800 AGP video card.
Click to expand...

And yet, you run with a 6600 LE, so you're just making things worse. Did YOU jump on-board when 7800 and 7900 GS AGP cards sold like hotcakes? Did you lay down your money when ATI graciously released the x1950 Pro AGP?

No, you didn't. And now that you've refused to spend your money on perfectly good upgrades for THREE YEARS, you expect the big card makers to cater to your wants when you have not bought a single AGP upgrade card? Get real.

The fact is, the vast majority of the AGP upgrade market took advantage of the 7800/7900GS and x1950 Pro, and bought their last upgrade. While ATI does offer AGP cards using their newer chips, sales are sluggish, and ATI's latest drivers have spotty AGP support. AGP is DEAD. Too bad you missed the upgrade bus, but you waited too long.
 
NKDietrich said:
Yes it's true that there are a great many AGP systems out there. However, it is also true that the majority of those are using very very old CPUs that would kill any advantage of an enthusiast-grade AGP card.

Let's face it, if you've got an AGP slot, your CPU can't be that great. Even a 3.8GHz P4 is a hunk of junk compared to even a moderate Core 2, and the S939 end-of-the-road isn't that much better. That being said, if you _do_ have one of the best CPUs of last generation, PCIe is probably just a motherboard swap away. (I.e. an LGA775 P4 can easily find a PCIe board for itself, same for S939. S754 and S478 can get PCIe too, though its rare now.)

There are options open to move to PCIe for just about anyone, and they don't cost much. If you aren't an enthusiast, then you dont need an 8800. If you ARE an enthusiast, then it is time to move on to PCIe.

I really do not see a purpose for AGP any longer at the enthusiast level. PCIe is several years old now and a cheap upgrade path is available to anyone with a CPU made in the last 4 years.
Click to expand...

I have to agree, with the crashing price of ram, people who complain "oh, but I have 2GB of DDR, waaaahhh," have no excuses anymore. You can pick up that same 2GB of ram in DDR2 800 form for under 40 bucks, and a motherboard for less than $100.

Socket 939 customers may have a more difficult time because motherboard have dried up, but you can still buy new boards (look on Newegg), and there's a huge used market.
 
Hurshai said:
Come on, thats just rude. I'm sure there are plenty of things you don't know about.
Click to expand...

He was being a jerk -- you'll notice that's the OP that asked the question, and all his other responses make it clear he already knew the answer.

He was responding to a reasonably detailed post by Nenu explaining the effect of CPU clock speeds on framerate that didn't agree with his position.

The "suddenly act like an idiot" thing was... well, tacky. Hence the "..."

Suppose I should've just got to the point and called him out then and there.
 
daemionsos said:
I've only been bulding computers for a few years. What is this AGP?
Click to expand...

Just in case you're serious...

Graphics cards have used different buses over time. I know more about the PC side of things than the Apple side, and I know Apple made up quite a few of their own standards, so I'll focus on the PC.

First you had ISA, back in the 286 or IBM XT era. This is really early stuff -- CGA 8 color graphics, stuff like that. The slots are very long and wider than modern slots, but have fewer conductors.

ISA was replaced by PCI, which has gone through a number of revisions and some variations like PCI-X used for the most part only in servers. There are still PCI slots on most motherboards today, though they're being phased out in favor of PCIe 1x and 4x slots. Most modern sound cards and many things like USB expansion cards and IDE adapters are PCI cards. For a very long time, all graphics cards were PCI as well.

In 1997 the AGP bus was introduced. It's the first widely available dedicated graphics bus -- unlike ISA and PCI, only graphics cards use the AGP bus. An AGP slot is slightly more narrow than a PCI slot, and slightly longer, with more contacts along its length. It provided the graphics card with more bandwidth. The first AGP slots were AGP 1x. Later revisions included AGP 2x, AGP 4x, and AGP 8x. Some early AGP cards won't work in later AGP compatible boards due to voltage requirement issues, caused by changes in the specification over time. The same is true the other way -- some later cards won't work in earlier slots, though in theory some cards are backward compatible if you're willing to sacrifice bandwidth.

2003 saw the introduction of the PCIe or PCI Express bus. PCI express is different than previous buses in that it has several different types of slots, with different lengths. There are x1, 4x, 8x, and 16x slots. Slots can also be mechanically as long as one type of slot, but have the bandwidth of a lesser slot. Many earlier Crossfire and SLI capable motherboards resorted to this. They'd have a single 16x mechanical 16x electrical main video slot. The second slot would be 16x mechanical but have to share bandwidth with the first, so with two cards in place each would get only 8x electrical bandwidth. More modern boards will allow two cards with full 16x bandwidth to both. Some will even allow three or four cards with full bandwidth.

The primary reason for the move between buses is bandwidth. For example, AGP 8x tops out around 2133 MB/s, where as PCI Express 1.1 16x tops out around 4Gb/s, or about 2x what AGP 8x is capable of. The PCI Express standard has been revised, raising it to 2.0 and doubling the signaling rate, so a 16x PCIe 2.0 connector can move up to 8Gb/s of data.
 
isai95 said:
AGP still is fast.
AGP 8x vs PCIe 16x is not universes a part!
What if we had AGP 16x can we get the same speeds?
Is it like USB 1.1 vs USB 2.0 difference? I don't think so.

Hard drives for instance, we had the regular PCI bus with a max bandwidth of 133MB/s, now we have like 500MB/s and still there is no hard drive that has a constant transfer rate more the 50MB/s and Max transfer rate of 120MB/s even SCSI, unless you have a bunch of hard drives together in raid 0, but still not every body has a raid 0. Most people use only one hard drive.
Click to expand...

AGP 8x was already hitting the limits that the standard could offer, with fancy 8x-pumped clock speed. AGP slot timing got tighter and tighter with every generation, and motherboard manufacturers were ready to drop it when PCIe came along.

Why PCIe is a good thing:

Having one PCIe x16 slot on a board plus a few x1 slots is still less complicated to route and simulate than a parallel 32-bit PCI bus, let-alone the much higher-clocked AGP. PCIe lanes are independent, so the signal paths don't have to be synchronized like with PCI/AGP.

The incredibly reduced cost of implementation has led to MOST low-end motherboards featuring a PCIe x16 upgrade slot. This is an unparalleled success, since AGP was never an affordable upgrade option, and was not included on practically any integrated graphics chipsets.

Today, you can buy a cheapo Dell Inspiron with integrated graphics, and there's an x16 slot if you decide you want to game. What a great improvement that is!

And for slightly more cost, you can easily put TWO video slots on one board for low-cost. Can someone tell me why this is a bad thing? AGP could never do ANY of this, and that's why it is gone.
 
PCI-E can also transfer traffic simultaneously in both directions.
Any arbitration on AGP has to wait until the bus is free and then further data transfers have to wait for this to finish.
For slower cards all this isnt a big concern but it is a bottleneck for faster cards
Couple that with the lack of high end processors on AGP boards and DDR1 or SDRam and the usefulness/power of a fast AGP part is much diminished.

Also given that the cost of higher end AGP cards is usually more than a PCI-E equivalent and the AGP part also does not perform as well, it starts to make sense to upgrade.
There are some stunning bargains to be had when moving to PCI-E now.
Any extra cost can be offset by getting a cheaper, less powerful PCI-E card that will still outperform the higher end AGP solutions.
 
defaultluser said:
AGP 8x was already hitting the limits that the standard could offer, with fancy 8x-pumped clock speed. AGP slot timing got tighter and tighter with every generation, and motherboard manufacturers were ready to drop it when PCIe came along.

Why PCIe is a good thing:

Having one PCIe x16 slot on a board plus a few x1 slots is still less complicated to route and simulate than a parallel 32-bit PCI bus, let-alone the much higher-clocked AGP. PCIe lanes are independent, so the signal paths don't have to be synchronized like with PCI/AGP.

The incredibly reduced cost of implementation has led to MOST low-end motherboards featuring a PCIe x16 upgrade slot. This is an unparalleled success, since AGP was never an affordable upgrade option, and was not included on practically any integrated graphics chipsets.

Today, you can buy a cheapo Dell Inspiron with integrated graphics, and there's an x16 slot if you decide you want to game. What a great improvement that is!

And for slightly more cost, you can easily put TWO video slots on one board for low-cost. Can someone tell me why this is a bad thing? AGP could never do ANY of this, and that's why it is gone.
Click to expand...

QFT :cool:

Couldn't have said it better myself.


Hard drives for instance, we had the regular PCI bus with a max bandwidth of 133MB/s, now we have like 500MB/s and still there is no hard drive that has a constant transfer rate more the 50MB/s and Max transfer rate of 120MB/s even SCSI, unless you have a bunch of hard drives together in raid 0, but still not every body has a raid 0. Most people use only one hard drive.
Click to expand...

Your totally off on this. Even today's lowest end HDD's are capable of sustained media reads at at least 65MB/s, not 50. Also, PATA and SATA-I are not hot swapable, meaning no eSATA (SATA-II). SCSI in RAID 0, 1, 5, or 0+1 can obtain speeds well beyond that of 120MB/s, especially SAS SCSI. More like over 200MB/s. Not to mention that in a server environment where many people may be accessing a single HDD's data, the port bandwidth will be very important not to bottleneck. Of course these speeds aren't really usefull in a single-user environement, but on servers, it is totally necessary for decent performance. Another thing, high-end RAID cards with built-in/add-in memory can make the RAID array far faster than any mobo's chipset could even hope to do.

I highly recommend you check your data on this first before posting silly statements. :p
 
isai95 said:
Isn't it the video card the one that does all the graphics processing?
Click to expand...

If the graphics card isnt told what to do, it wont do anything.
The faster you can tell it what to do, the faster it will run up until the point where it is fully utilised.
An AMD x2 @ 2.8GHz isnt fast enough to fully utilise an 8800GT at standard clocks
It doesnt mean that its not usable, far from it, but it does limit the max resolution you can play at and overclocking the card is almost pointless.
 
I dont see the point in buying an AGP 8800 video card, if your dumping that much cash into a video card but you're too cheap to upgrade the rest of your unit, what are you gonna do when you finally catch up to today and PCI-E because you cant stand the bottleneck? Spend all that cash on new mobo cpu ram then stuck with a KILLER AGP card that you may aswell smash on the wall.... or sell for half price on ebay..
 
matrix563 said:
i guess nvidia saw the x1950pro agp (i think?) wasn't doing so hot ;)
Click to expand...

You are wrong. The X1950PRO is out of stock in any e tailer available, because it was sold out, not because nobody bought them. The main reason that nVidia didn't brought the 8 series to AGP is because that chip is incompatible with the BR02 bridge used to translate PCIe to AGP signals. The AGP market is not big, but still there and it is significant. There will be lots of people who will pair this HD 3850 with lowly CPU's, but a sale is a sale, or people with decent CPU's which will also pair it with a HD 3850, and who knows if someone just decides to release a limited edition HD 3870 ala GeCube. But for sure the AGP market is narrowing, but still have some life left, hear this, I knew of someone who paired the 8800GTS 640 with a 3.0GHz Prescott P4 CPU!!! So anything in this world can be expected!!
 
You forgot this one :D

silent-circuit said:
Just in case you're serious...

Graphics cards have used different buses over time. I know more about the PC side of things than the Apple side, and I know Apple made up quite a few of their own standards, so I'll focus on the PC.

First you had ISA, back in the 286 or IBM XT era. This is really early stuff -- CGA 8 color graphics, stuff like that. The slots are very long and wider than modern slots, but have fewer conductors.

ISA was replaced by PCI, which has gone through a number of revisions and some variations like PCI-X used for the most part only in servers. There are still PCI slots on most motherboards today, though they're being phased out in favor of PCIe 1x and 4x slots. Most modern sound cards and many things like USB expansion cards and IDE adapters are PCI cards. For a very long time, all graphics cards were PCI as well.

In 1997 the AGP bus was introduced. It's the first widely available dedicated graphics bus -- unlike ISA and PCI, only graphics cards use the AGP bus. An AGP slot is slightly more narrow than a PCI slot, and slightly longer, with more contacts along its length. It provided the graphics card with more bandwidth. The first AGP slots were AGP 1x. Later revisions included AGP 2x, AGP 4x, and AGP 8x. Some early AGP cards won't work in later AGP compatible boards due to voltage requirement issues, caused by changes in the specification over time. The same is true the other way -- some later cards won't work in earlier slots, though in theory some cards are backward compatible if you're willing to sacrifice bandwidth.

2003 saw the introduction of the PCIe or PCI Express bus. PCI express is different than previous buses in that it has several different types of slots, with different lengths. There are x1, 4x, 8x, and 16x slots. Slots can also be mechanically as long as one type of slot, but have the bandwidth of a lesser slot. Many earlier Crossfire and SLI capable motherboards resorted to this. They'd have a single 16x mechanical 16x electrical main video slot. The second slot would be 16x mechanical but have to share bandwidth with the first, so with two cards in place each would get only 8x electrical bandwidth. More modern boards will allow two cards with full 16x bandwidth to both. Some will even allow three or four cards with full bandwidth.

The primary reason for the move between buses is bandwidth. For example, AGP 8x tops out around 2133 MB/s, where as PCI Express 1.1 16x tops out around 4Gb/s, or about 2x what AGP 8x is capable of. The PCI Express standard has been revised, raising it to 2.0 and doubling the signaling rate, so a 16x PCIe 2.0 connector can move up to 8Gb/s of data.
Click to expand...
 
Your totally off on this. Even today's lowest end HDD's are capable of sustained media reads at at least 65MB/s, not 50. Also, PATA and SATA-I are not hot swapable, meaning no eSATA (SATA-II). SCSI in RAID 0, 1, 5, or 0+1 can obtain speeds well beyond that of 120MB/s, especially SAS SCSI. More like over 200MB/s. Not to mention that in a server environment where many people may be accessing a single HDD's data, the port bandwidth will be very important not to bottleneck. Of course these speeds aren't really usefull in a single-user environement, but on servers, it is totally necessary for decent performance. Another thing, high-end RAID cards with built-in/add-in memory can make the RAID array far faster than any mobo's chipset could even hope to do.

I highly recommend you check your data on this first before posting silly statements.
Click to expand...
Where did you get this info? Check the Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS and Seagate 1TB hard drive for instance!
http://www.storagereview.com/WD7500AAKS.sr?page=0,1
http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr?page=0,2
Some of the best hard drives in the market right now for desktops with impressive 8ms access time for WD and almost 14ms for Seagate and goes a little over the 100MB/s, so the sustained transfer rate is much less than that, perhaps, on the vecinity of 50MB/s depending of what kind of files one is writing. Still is not saturating the 133MB/s that the regular old PCI provides. Of course we are talking for the vast majority of desktop computer users. Servers is different, and I pointed that on my post.

For Servers, the SCSI Cheetah 15K.5 tops 135MB/s. This one gets a bottle neck with regular PCI @ 133MB/s:D
http://www.storagereview.com/ST973451SS.sr?page=0,1

But I understand that they can use raid 0 and could use all the bandwidth available.
Get your info correctly. I have not checked storage review for years and still I'm not that far off with my numbers.
 
Some people probably plan on keeping their AGP systems around until the next gen of CPUs rolls around. I know I was waiting for Nehalem, because I knew it wouldn't fit on LGA775, and I didn't really expect any core 2 duo to be able to run a game like crysis or anything, so I figured why spend money upgrading to some that's still not going to cut the cake, when I'll just have to do it again?

I ordered an x1950XT for my AGP system (which was about a 4Ghz P4). Sadly, the card didn't last very long before dying, and I RMAed it. I bought a s939 system with an opty 165 and an 8800GTS (keeping ram, case, PSU, HDs) with the intentions of overclocking. Overall, it was 500 dollars, with 300 of it going towards the graphics card.

It's a stopgap, but I can completely understand where people are coming from by wanting to upgrade their AGP system. Sure, they won't get everything they can out of their video card, but at least they can save some money and get something better along the way. It's not like all of us are working adults (some of us are just college or HS students), and we can't afford to upgrade every generation of products.

And, the best performing AGP systems are probably AMD systems (s939 is still plenty fine). I see this as AMD taking care of it's old AGP customers. Probably because if these old AGPers have to toss their s939 systems for a new video card, they're going to go intel, and we all know what happens when an AMD guy goes intel now. It's probably more of a platform retention thing than anything else. If I was AMD, I'd be doing everything I could to stop people from switching to intel, because I'd want to try and get a decent CPU out first.
 
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