AGP vs PCI-E Price/Performance

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Soldur

Limp Gawd
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Jun 22, 2004
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I currently have an AGP 9800 Pro

I was looking into buying a NVidia 6800gs 256mb AGP for ~$220

When I started looking into it a bit further, I found that the NVidia 6800gs 256mb PCI-E cards were ~$180. Assuming they have the same clock speeds, are they equal (other than the obvious bus difference)? Are AGP prices on the rise as they become more and more sparse?
 
They should perform about the same. AGP is definatly dying though, and fewer and fewer of them will be made.
 
Soldur said:
I currently have an AGP 9800 Pro

I was looking into buying a NVidia 6800gs 256mb AGP for ~$220

When I started looking into it a bit further, I found that the NVidia 6800gs 256mb PCI-E cards were ~$180. Assuming they have the same clock speeds, are they equal (other than the obvious bus difference)? Are AGP prices on the rise as they become more and more sparse?
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The PCI-e 6800gs is NOT unlockable :/

The AGP one, sometimes is. It's a different core.
 
Teh PCI-E one uses a different core.The AGP one uses a NV40 core. The Pci-E one has an extra 75mhz on the core but CANNOT UNLOCK. My BFG 6800gs AGP card unlocked to 16 pipes and overclocked.

I got mine for 200$ Two months ago.
 
AGP prices are definitely going to stay higher. They have been higher on comparable parts ever since PCI-e came along. I think it's the gfx card manufacturers' way of encouraging us to upgrade.

When I was in your boat (9800 Pro, K8N Neo2 Plat) I opted to upgrade to my current rig. After selling off my old parts, the net cost was about $50 iirc.
 
The fact is that virtually no new machines shipped with AGP support in the last 6 months, it has gone all PCIe. The manufacturers aren't helping things with their PCIe-native designs with bridge chips.

Since all new AGP cards these days require bridge chips, and have smaller runs than the PCIe cards (upgrade market only), they can't reach the prices of the PCIe versions. This trend will never stop.

In addition, ATI and Nvidia purposefully reduce the official clock speeds on their cards to give buyers the impression that PCIe is superior to AGP. For example, the 7800 GS ended up being a dud because it has TWO quads disabled, and is clocked slower than a 7800 GT. For the price, you'd think we'd get a 350 MHz 7800 GT, but Nvidia knows better than that. The 6800 GS AGP and 6600 GT AGP were also specced lower than their PCIe counterparts.

They blame it on the bridge chips being unstable around 500 MHz, but we already know it can top 500 MHz (6600 GT AGP anyone?). It makes them look really stupid when board makers release super overclocked versions of the card (like 7800 GS boards at 460 MHz), but the board makers are in on it too: they are more than happy to release a super goes like hell version and charge even more for it.

ATI, Nvidia and the whole card industry is going to great lengths to get you to buy a PCIe board and video card, so you might as well give in.
 
Soldur said:
I currently have an AGP 9800 Pro

I was looking into buying a NVidia 6800gs 256mb AGP for ~$220

When I started looking into it a bit further, I found that the NVidia 6800gs 256mb PCI-E cards were ~$180. Assuming they have the same clock speeds, are they equal (other than the obvious bus difference)? Are AGP prices on the rise as they become more and more sparse?
Click to expand...
Well, since you'll need a new mobo with pci-e, that's another $100. But I agree with the other guy. You'll probably need to get a new mobo with pci-e next time when you upgrade that 6800gs anyway. It's time to upgrade.
 
Thanks for the info all! After some more searching I've been able to find several socket 754 motherboards with PCI-E for ~$60. So that makes my net upgrade cost $10. It appears that everything else in my system (i.e. RAM) will work with the new board also. Now I've opened up the whole can of worms though, as I find myself looking at a new CPU that is not 754 :(
 
A funny thing happened to me. I have a 9800p and was not really planning on upgrading, but my agp mobo recently died. I RMA'd the thing planning on just getting a replacement and sticking with agp, but the Egg was out of that board at the time, so they just gave me a cash refund, so I decided to go ahead and give in to pci-e. I got a 6800gs and pci-e mobo. They'll be here tomorrow :p
So the upgrade was not too painful for me
 
Soldur said:
Thanks for the info all! After some more searching I've been able to find several socket 754 motherboards with PCI-E for ~$60. So that makes my net upgrade cost $10. It appears that everything else in my system (i.e. RAM) will work with the new board also. Now I've opened up the whole can of worms though, as I find myself looking at a new CPU that is not 754 :(
Click to expand...
I'm in that situation now - I upgraded my mobo a couple of months ago, still s754 and AGP, and now I'm tempted to get s939, PCI-e and a 7900 card. I probably won't upgrade but. The only bottleneck in the system is the 6600GT card, the rest is fine for gaming and the other stuff I do with it. AGP 8x is fine for gaming, the bandwidth provided by it is still quite a bit, and is more than enough for current games even running at high res. The only problem with AGP is that is is an old, archaic design, and it relies on a lot of protocols and commands to work properly. It also needs a few extra things to increase that bandwidth (AGP write combining anyone?).

PCI-e is so much more straightforward and simpler to use, and thats exactly why manufacturers are pushinf PCI-e. The bandwidth is more than AGP (caters for the future) and is much simpler to implement for both the video card manufacturers and the chipset manufacturers. So while AGP is still good, it isn't the way the market is going. Oh yeah, you can't SLi with AGP :D
 
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