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Old December 23rd 04, 10:04 AM
Paul
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In article , "Ryan Atici"
wrote:

The PCI-Express might be the future technology to replace AGP video card
slot in the future. Having said that, PCI-Express doesn't offer any
advantage or improvement at this moment in time over AGP video cards for
now. Maybe six months or a year from now, the new technology will fully take
advantage of the new PCI-Express video card and make the PCI-Express video
cards superior over AGP video cards, but for now, that's not the case.

If you're a hardcore gamer and only want the best of the best performance at
this moment in time from your video card, you will go for an AGP slot video
card. Having said all that, I am disappointed to see that the latest ASUS
motherboard "A8N-SLI Deluxe" named to be a hardcore gamer "motherboard"
doesn't have an AGP video card slot when indeed PCI-Express video card is
not yet as good as an AGP slot video card in performance. I don't get
it...!?!

The question is; don't you think it is way premature to replace AGP video
card slot in a latest ASUS motherboard with PCI-Express when indeed
PCI-Express is not even nearly as good as AGP video cards in performance?

I was gonna build a new computer using the newest and the best components as
available today, but having seen that the latest ASUS motherboard release
(A8N-SLI Deluxe) doesn't support an AGP video card, I am little upset.


Tomshardware has some video charts for the latest PCI Express cards.
You can compare them to the AGP charts:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...222/index.html (PCI-E)
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...004/index.html (AGP)

Compare "Far Cry" benchmarks:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...charts-07.html
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...charts-09.html

The AGP X800 XT PE does 91.6 FPS (R420 520/1120 256-bit 16x1)
The PCI-E X800 XT PE does 111.0 FPS (R423 256MB 520/1120 256-bit 16)

The AGP 6800U does 86.0 FPS (NV40 400/1100 256-bit 16x1)
The PCI-E 6800U does 102.9 FPS (NV45 256MB 400/1100 256-bit 16)
2x6800U SLI (PCI-E) does 135.2 FPS

The ATI cards don't use a separate PCI-E bridge chip, the
way that the Nvidia cards do. But the benchmark above suggests
the same speedup when comparing AGP to PCI-E version of the same
card. (Roughly 21% or so, give or take.)

In the examples above, the SLI configuration seems to be paying
off. AGP doesn't come in a two slot version, and you'd need to use
an AGP and a PCI version of some video card, in order to "SLI"
something on an AGP based platform. (And that is ignoring the
mechanical issues of how SLI cards connect together.)

Therefore, I'd say, buy the A8N-SLI, a decent processor, and
"game on!".

If you really want an AGP slot, I think you'll find the A8V rev2
is every bit as good, and with the AGP lock, you can do overclocking
experiments with it if you want.

The A8N-SLI was created to fill a need, and was introduced now
for a reason. If SLI sucked that bad, they wouldn't have bothered.

SLI is probably, in fact, more platform than most people need. What
little I've read, people seem to be more interested in SLI'ing
some 6600 class cards, rather than 6800U, which tells you that people
really aren't interested in "over-buying" their systems right now.

In any case, I think a SLI system will be a "winter gamer", as the
box will run too hot in summer to be usable for anything. It'll make
an excellent space heater (Anandtech measured system power dissipation
at 329W for 2x6800U).

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2284&p=5

Paul