AGP vs. PCI-E x16

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isai95

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 9, 2005
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In reality, is PCI-E x16 much faster than AGP? Or is it a marketing hype only?
In the real world how many times faster is a PCI-E x16 video card vs an equivalent AGP video card? Thank you.
 
isai95 said:
In reality, is PCI-E x16 much faster than AGP? Or is it a marketing hype only?
In the real world how many times faster is a PCI-E x16 video card vs an equivalent AGP video card? Thank you.
Click to expand...


Wether it really improves performance or not is inconsequential. PCIe is the new standard and its evident thats where ATi and Nvidia are taking us (No longer releasing new AGP cards).
 
isai95 said:
In reality, is PCI-E x16 much faster than AGP? Or is it a marketing hype only?
In the real world how many times faster is a PCI-E x16 video card vs an equivalent AGP video card? Thank you.
Click to expand...

Between similar GPUs there is almost no difference.

The big reality, is that the high end cards are all PCI-E only, and probably won't be released in AGP format. (ie the 7800 GT and GTX)
 
Gaming at the moment does not take advantage of the full bandwidth available through PCI-e 16x. Thats why you see no difference in a videocard at PCI-e 8x and 16x (two cards in SLI normally run at 8x each instead of 16x, for a combined total of 16 lanes).

lemme dig up the specs:

...

okay, so AGP 8x is roughly 2.1GB/s (gigabytes, not bits, hence the capital B), while PCI-e 16x offers over 4GB/s (in each direction). I cannot find if AGP offers 2.1GB/s total (1.05GB/s in each way) or if it travels in only one direction, period. I thought it offered talk in both directions, somewhat necessary for proper communication with the card between system busses and memory and whatnot.
Either way, its at least double the bandwidth of AGP, perhaps quadruple in manufacturer terms. I do not believe AGP 8x offered 2.1GB/s in both directions at once, it may have been shared bandwidth (at least between the two directions).

But here's the kicker, cards won't perform any facter over PCI-e 16x then they would over AGP 8x, but thats just for now. As games demand more, they will require more bandwidth.
As of now, the only people who receive benefit is those that use the cards like ATi's FireGL series and nVidia's Quadro sereis, using them in such things as 3D and CAD modelling.
 
get pci express now b/c the midrange priced on pci-express is a lot faster than agp's.
 
PCIE is better because:
A. All the new generation cards will be on it
B. It offers more bandwidth.

However, the only reason that will be relevant to you is reason A. Until cards and games come out that can actually use the bandwidth of PCIE, then reason B won't make a difference.

This article demonstrates what I am saying kinda. It's an old article, but it shows how the difference between AGP 4x and 8x is minimal:
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=604&cid=3&pg=5

It's the same situation with AGP 8x vs PCIE now.
 
The "agp vs. pci-e 16x" horse has been beaten to death a thousand times over, and yes, as of now there is very little performance difference between them. But that's not the end of the story...if you look at pci vs. pci-e the performance difference is huge. Take your agp/pci based system and load it up with several pci gigabit lan cards and a pci raid controller and then try to tell me that pci-e is not needed. Also, it unifies the entire system bus architecture so that every device rides the same type of bus, and each bus is independant. With pci-e you can just add more lanes to the chipset as overall bandwidth requirements increase.
 
isai95 said:
In reality, is PCI-E x16 much faster than AGP? Or is it a marketing hype only?
In the real world how many times faster is a PCI-E x16 video card vs an equivalent AGP video card? Thank you.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that when AGP first surfaced, very few AGP cards are any better than their PCI counter part. Over time as vendors begin to design parts that takes advantage of features available under AGP, the difference begin to show. You can expect the same with PCI-e and AGP.
 
PCI-E was an unneeded standard to make a bunch of people buy new graphics cards when upgrading mobos. AGP had a good two or three years of life left before it even _started_ to feel the pinch.

PCI-E will give you more bang for the buck simply because most graphics cards are going that way now. If VIA or someone made an AGP only card that performed well and sold for a decent price they could make a killing.
 
NulloModo said:
PCI-E was an unneeded standard to make a bunch of people buy new graphics cards when upgrading mobos. AGP had a good two or three years of life left before it even _started_ to feel the pinch.

PCI-E will give you more bang for the buck simply because most graphics cards are going that way now. If VIA or someone made an AGP only card that performed well and sold for a decent price they could make a killing.
Click to expand...

pci-e wasn't an unnecessary standard, and it wasn't created strictly for videocards, it simply provided the ability to integrate videocard technology into pci technology
each lane of pci-e is dedicated bandwidth, unlike PCI.. AGP was created because graphics cards needed dedicated bandwidth. With the invention of PCI technology and dedicated bandwidth for each device, they figured it best to unify and put a videocard on pci-e instead of having two types of busses. Remember, AGP was only born to give dedicated bandwidth. When PCI-e came around, AGP was no longer needed. PCI-e also gave the ability for more bandwidth headroom. So together, the fact that it was dedicated bandwidth and more bandwidth, it was decided to become the new graphics standard.

to sum it up: pci-e was born out of necessity.


and isai95, no problem ;)
 
NulloModo said:
PCI-E was an unneeded standard to make a bunch of people buy new graphics cards when upgrading mobos. AGP had a good two or three years of life left before it even _started_ to feel the pinch.

PCI-E will give you more bang for the buck simply because most graphics cards are going that way now. If VIA or someone made an AGP only card that performed well and sold for a decent price they could make a killing.
Click to expand...


And see.. I think agp was the unneeded standard.

:)
 
Laforge said:
And see.. I think agp was the unneeded standard.

:)
Click to expand...

Heh, in all honesty I could get by with a PCI graphics card if anyone made one with dual-link DVI
 
Laforge said:
And see.. I think agp was the unneeded standard.

:)
Click to expand...

I don't think it was unneeded, necessarily, but it certainly was haphazardly put together. AGP definitley had a purpose (pci alone can't provide enough bandwidth for high-end cards) but it was very poorly thought out...it really was more of a quick and dirty hack to solve a problem instead of a permanent solution, and unfortuantely it ended up staying around much longer than intended.

BTW I hope this post makes sense as I'm not ENTIRELY sober as I'm typing this :p I guess I'll see tomorrow
 
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