When you use high-end AGP video card, you don't need to resort to SLI
scheme, which is designed for PCI-Express video cards.

SLI is created because single PCI-Express video card is not as good as a
high-end AGP video card(period). That's why the motherboard manufacturers
think that pairing 2 PCI-Express video cards might allure *some* gamers into
buying PCI-Express video cards. This is all about alluring people into
buying 2 inferior video cards to create bigger sale. They had to create a
motherboard to pair up 2 PCI-Express video cards to compete against 1
high-end AGP video card by itself. Don't you get it? This is all about
suckering people into buying PCI-Express video cards in order to create a
new market for the new product when indeed new product is failed to compete
against an "old" AGP video card technology *for the time being*.

Far more superior performance could have been achieved by manufacturing a
motherboard by pairing up 2 high-end AGP video cards. The cost for 2
high-end video cards would have been a lot more expensive, but that's not
the case. It is not the cost but the performance is the problem here. The
bottom line is that the PCI-Express is not as good as any existing high-end
AGP video card. That's why the PCI-Express video card is paired to compete
against 1 high-end AGP video card. In that instance, two paired high-end
AGP video cards would have been far more superior to any 2 paired
PCI-Express video cards. I mean, how far are you gonna go with pairing
things up (4 PCI-Express video cards, or 6 PCI-Express video cards...?!?!)
until you come up with a decent PCI-Express video card that can challenge
and outdo in performance an AGP video card by itself without any pairing
scheme? Come on now! They highly overrate this new PCI-Express video card
technology but can't do anything better than resorting to a scheme.



"ocbwilg" wrote in message
news

"Ryan Atici" wrote in message
...
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.

They key here is the SLI. You probably weren't aware of it, but nVidia's
SLI implementation in the nForce4 chipset allows you to use two PCI
Express video cards together for much higher performance than a single
card. While a single AGP 6800 Ultra may be faster than a single PCI-E
6800 Ultra, a pair of PCI-E 6800 Ultra cards is gonna spank any AGP
config. I have seen benchmarks indicating that in many cases a pair of
$200 6600GT cards will be faster than a single $500 6800 Ultra. That's
why it's a hardocre gamers motherboard.