Will AGP stay around for another round or two of new cards?

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Hello everyone, I am looking at purcashasing a system from a friend of mine (A64 3500, 2Gb Corsair RAM, 6600GT AGP , 160Gb HD ect. . . . ). My question is, as the subject states, for future upgradability will ATI and Nvidia continue to make their next gen or even the gen after that in AGP or will they only produce low end cards for AGP?
 
IMO if our upgrading (new mobo, card etc) then go for PCI-E, even now, you see AGP being fazed out abit (mainly with the XL). Maybe now its not completely mainstream. In one or 2 years there will be a greater amount of cards for the PCIx format, then the AGP format
 
i wouldn't think so ... AGP is not being used to it's max ... they still support agp 4x ... so i believe for atleast another 2 rounds they will have to support agp 8x ...

the question is .. will PCI-X become the default or is it just something that was created and won't last for long... We don't know

Wait and see I guess
 
Yeah, I figure PCI-X will take over eventually but I "feel" that ATI and Nvidia will make atleast their next round of cards in an AGP format just because as the poll here on [H] shows a good majority of people have AGP and not PCI-X .

Thanks for the input.
 
mohammedtaha said:
the question is .. will PCI-X become the default or is it just something that was created and won't last for long... We don't know

Wait and see I guess
Click to expand...

Nope, PCIx is the next thing, its not just a little sidenote, once graphics cards makers start utilizing the x16 slot (as apposed to the x8 like AGP) to it's full potentiol, we will see a large performance jump in cards.
 
i'm sorry to be such an ass about this but come on guys pcie and pci-x are two totally diffrent things you might confuse people interchanging them like that, you mean pcie
 
It will probably follow a similar path to that which took place when AGP cards phased out all but the lowest end PCI solutions. In one or two gens you probably won't be able to get the very best without going PCI-E, but for now and in the near future AGP owners will still have plenty of upgrade options.
 
AGP will stick around for a while with the bridge chips. After the next round AGP will be a second class citizen like PCI was after AGP was released, IMO. ATI still hasn't released a single card using the 3rd party PCI-E to AGP bridge chip they're relying on, not even a preview.

Take it as a sign that neither company have announced any new native AGP chips and what amounted to a 6 month refresh were all PCI-E native.
 
You'll still have some options but like everybody else said, if you want the best, you're probably going to have to goto pcie.

However, that isn't to say that the midstream cards most people buy anyway will still come in AGP and you'll have many options open to you. It's a sad thing to see and it's mostly marketing but the other day I saw a 256MB PCI (yes, just PCI) Radeon.
 
Yes, I believe it will be...otherwise card makers will be shooting themselves in the foot and alienating millions of customers.
 
Isn't another advantage of PCI-Express that it has more power comming through the slot. So that you don't need a power connection.
Oh and what is the difference between PCI-x and PCI-e?
 
canadian026 said:
Isn't another advantage of PCI-Express that it has more power comming through the slot. So that you don't need a power connection.
Oh and what is the difference between PCI-x and PCI-e?
Click to expand...
I don't know whether it has more power or not, but either way, we're still relying on extra power connectors.
As for PCI-X vs pcie, PCI-X is a server-grade, scaled up verson of PCI. Runs at 64bit/133mhz vs 32bit/33mhz, while mantaining backwards compatability. Google is your friend btw ;)
 
Before asking a question like this consider the fact that Nvidia and ATI stopped upgrading cards for regular PCI slots only in the last year or two. I know the 5200FX was the last Nvidia. I think the 9500 was the last ATI. PCI was also the biggest seller in 2004 in the UK. Consider the age of PCI graphic solutions, being around 9 years, and AGP, which was created in 1996 and seeing mainstream in 1998/99, and then consider the fact that about 2 or 3 years ago ATI and Nvidia stopped supporting PCI. That means AGP is good for around 3-4 years at least of support. This is nuts how people can even ask the question. The very first thing that has to happen is that AGP cards will be bridged from PCI Express chips. Such as the R520 being made pimarily for PCX support and then bridged and sold in AGP version. Like whats happening to the X850. The next thing that has to happen is that PCI Express has to show a speed advantage in single slot, which it does not. Tests have shown AGP 8X to still offer plenty of speed for games now and in the future. The real problem causer will be if the major motherboard manufacturers really push to phase out AGP like what intel is doing with the Socket T (which i think is extremely stupid by the way).

So, is PCX cool? Sure if you like the latest technology, like me, its great. Should it be on the average gamers primary buy list? No. It simply does not offer enough to warrent the cost/benefit ratio. All of us who have PCX now say some stupid reason like, well i want to have the latest technology to futureproof, and, i like having my pc so i wont have to upgrade it later. Most of the time this is just excuses. If you went through the costly change already chances are you like to upgrade. Now you're telling me in 2 years you will be using the same memory, graphics and processor? I dont believe it. The same people that spent all the money on the best PCI Express setup are the same ones who upgrade on a yearly basis. My take. AGP is good for quite awhile in terms of technology.
 
If you are building a new system from scratch then PCI-E is a good choice. However, there's no reason not to buy an existing AGP system. There always needs to be a level of parity between the CPU and GPU in order for things to make sense. Any current motherboard and CPU will likely work well for the next generation of GPU's, but that's about it. Don't worry about the video cards that are coming out a year and a half from now because the current crop of CPU's will bottleneck them regardless of which video slot you have.

If you are serious about the best performance, the 6600GT is the part or the equation you should consider, not AGP itself. There are AGP cards that more than double the performance of that card on the market today. That's not to say the card isn't any good. It is. It's just all relative.
 
isnt pci-e first gen? if so Im sure theyre still working all the bugs out of it... why not wait till they get things going good then progress on... Im in no hurry. Hope my 6800 last a while.
 
Vertigo Acid said:
I don't know whether it has more power or not, but either way, we're still relying on extra power connectors.
As for PCI-X vs pcie, PCI-X is a server-grade, scaled up verson of PCI. Runs at 64bit/133mhz vs 32bit/33mhz, while mantaining backwards compatability. Google is your friend btw ;)
Click to expand...

I thought current PCI-express cards didn't use the extra power connector. Maybe they do. If we all used google more, then most posts wouldn't be here, and whats the fun in that. :)
 
PCIe can deliver 75watts to the card through its bus alone which is enough for X800XLs and 6600s but not 6800s and X800XTs and above. Yeah ok for everyone in this topic PCIX is not the same damn thing as PCIe.
 
Dunno 'bout ATI, but nVidia has developed a PCIe/AGP bridge chip. They'll be able to use this chip, without a redesign, to convert the next several generations of PCIe-native cards to AGP.

Right now it looks like that chip costs about $20 to add onto a board. As long as there's enough people willing to pay this cost to justify a production run, you'll see AGP vid-cards coming from nVidia.


as an aside... wouldn't it be fun to watch a 3rd party slap the nVidia bridge chip onto an ATI GPU?
 
I'm pretty sure ATi has a PCIe to AGP bridge, seeing as they just released an AGP version of the X800XL.
 
neverminding upgrading for a bit, thats a good system. the 6600GT aint all that great, but you can sell it and pop in a 6800GT/Ultra and not need to uprgade for a long time.

When that time comes, upgrade the whole thing, not just the GPU
 
Videocards aimed at gamers can roughly be divided into three categories: high-, middle- and low-end.

When an interface, such as AGP, is being phased out, the first type of card which will no longer be produced for this interface will be the high-end cards, to then gradually move towards the low-end, until no cards for this interface are produced at all.
The reason for this is because high-end cards are (usually) sold to people with high-end systems, which will feature the new interface (PCIe). As more and more people move to systems with the new interface, less high- and middle-end cards will be sold. Low-end cards are the budget cards, featuring relatively high-profit GPUs (old tech, thus cheap to produce), which are sold to those unlucky enough to be stuck with an old system, or an OEM system without proper expansion options (e.g., no AGP port in certain OEM systems).

As pointed out earlier, it's likely that AGP will see one more generation of high-end cards. From that point on it can take many years before low-end cards are no longer produced, though.
 
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