Tuesday, September 7, 2004
AGP Isn't the Bottleneck - Yet...
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 07:00 PM
"Lovers of high-end PC graphics rejoiced at news of the recent launch of desktops with PCI Express-based chip sets that promise dramatically faster graphics throughput than today's AGP 8X standard. But a preliminary look at two of the first PCI Express cards suggests that the spec will have more impact on future graphics headroom than on immediate performance gains.
In fact, our tests showed practically no performance difference between graphics cards using the AGP 8X interface and those using PCI Express. Though PCI Express 16X supports concurrent transfers of up to 4 gigabytes per second compared with AGP 8X's 2.1 GBps of shared bandwidth, even today's most graphics-intensive PC games have yet to turn the AGP conduit into a bottleneck."
Nothing terribly surprising here, but good to know nonetheless. For me, buying a PCI Express video card makes sense because it's more future-proof - I typically keep my graphic cards for two generations. That, and the Shuttle SB81P doesn't even have an AGP slot. 8)
In fact, our tests showed practically no performance difference between graphics cards using the AGP 8X interface and those using PCI Express. Though PCI Express 16X supports concurrent transfers of up to 4 gigabytes per second compared with AGP 8X's 2.1 GBps of shared bandwidth, even today's most graphics-intensive PC games have yet to turn the AGP conduit into a bottleneck."
Nothing terribly surprising here, but good to know nonetheless. For me, buying a PCI Express video card makes sense because it's more future-proof - I typically keep my graphic cards for two generations. That, and the Shuttle SB81P doesn't even have an AGP slot. 8)
