PCI Express vs AGP

[MrMashashin]

I just bought a new computer with a PCI express 16x slot and it came with a 256MB ATI Hyper Memory PCI-Express X16 (DVI/VGA/TV out) Radeon X600 SE. Is there any difference between AGP and PCIx?

 

[morningreis]

PCIE offers way more bandwidth than AGP. So it is definately better, but the thing is that you won't see a tremendous performance increase because games right not can't fully utilize the bandwidth AGP 3.0 provides. They should i the future though as AGP is phased out.

 

[pxc]

I just bought a new computer with a PCI express 16x slot and it came with a 256MB ATI Hyper Memory PCI-Express X16 (DVI/VGA/TV out) Radeon X600 SE. Is there any difference between AGP and PCIx?

For a HyperMemory (or Turbo Cache) card, definitely. The bi-directional bandwidth to make something like that possible is only available on PCI-Express: up to 4GB/s to/from (read/write) main memory at the same time.

That's a double-edged sword though. Your x600 SE 256MB only has 32MB of 64-bit memory on it. The "256MB" is the maximum amount of system memory (HyperMemory uses as an extension of the onboard memory) that it will use. Like the Turbo Cache cards, performance is pretty low. And in that way, it really doesn't matter if you bought a 9600SE AGP or x600SE PCI-E because both run about the same.