Alot has to do with the software , some titles need a strong cpu and some need a strong gpu. And yes AGP is old and has nowhere near the proformance of cutting edge hardware, but its only dead to people who sell new hardware !!
in fact, i have an old pc using Q6600 and asrock mb with ddr400 3GB ram with AGP 3850 now that i will still buy a AGP 4770 as i cannot see any bottleneck so for ppl like me, with C2D or C2Q, AGP ISN'T DEAD!!! for my new pc, of coz i7+280
Powercolor HD 4770 AGP doesn't exist http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13669&Itemid=1
Apparently, you didn't read my post either. Oh and yeah, me typing lol means I'm an elitist. Good job, Einstein.
Of course. But we're talking about a very significant bottleneck. Someone on the Mass Effect forums bought a 3850 AGP to get 10-15 fps at 1024x768, when he could've been getting 40-60 at 1280x1024 with a Core 2 instead of a P4. That card cost twice as much as the normal at the time as well, though he was content with it and played through the whole game like that.
The AGP bus is the major bottleneck, hey even if you could throw a Core i7 and 2000mhz DDR3 at AGP it still wouldnt do anything for it because the AGP bus just does not have enough bandwidth. PCI-E is here and it is the future, so you are better off saving your money to make the jump than wasting money on hardware that won't ever perform anywhere near its full potential.
The easy path is to just slip in a better video card.. The flip side may of been a whole new pc.. Or just a new MB and CPU and the video card .....
Now I would agree with you 100% with no argument.. A few years ago you would of still been right , but many would of had argument about that and would full a thread with many pages !!
I know, i used to be one of them lol.... my wakeup call was when i got Flight Simulator X and i was still on AGP with an HD3850, the only game or simulator if you will on the market that will actually even utilize the PCI-E 2.0 bus 100% lol.
there still no game can fully use 100% of pcie bus, and again and again, agp bus is still enough as the diff of 3dmark for similar spec is neglectable
Software doesn't utilize the PCI-e bus, the hardware does. There is currently no graphics card on the market that can fully utilize PCIe 1.0, though I believe the GTX295 is pretty close to it. The deviation from AGP didn't come because the bus itself had become a bottleneck to performance....it became a bottleneck to development and advancements. PCIe came about during GeForce6...AGP and PCIe GeForce 6800's only varied in performance because of the chipsets, not the bus. GeForce7 showed nearly identical comparisons....the chipset was the performance factor. I personally compared a AGP and PCIe 7600GS. The only difference was the nForce4 motherboard that was used. The results...anyone that would have been willing to declare the PCIe 7600GS the winner, would have been an idiot. The 2 cards posted nearly identical 3DMark scores, only varying by a few points. During the GeForce6 series, Gigabyte released a package deal....motherboard and dual-GPU GeForce 6600. Gigabyte couldn't make the card function properly on AGP. If it wasn't for PCIe, the Gigabyte GV-3D1 wouldn't have existed. Here's Hilbert's review of it http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-3d1-dual-gpu-6600gt/ I discovered guru3d because of that review.
For single card/GPU setups, with the right processor....yes, AGP is still viable. One of the major limits of AGP is the fact that it can't support multiple graphics processors. Gigabyte GV-3D1 would have been more than capable of utilizing ALL of the available bandwidth of the AGP bus, if the bus was capable of feeding dual GPU's. I would venture to say that AGP would most likely become a bottleneck to the GTX260 - GTX285, as those cards are bandwidth hogs. nVidia made every attempt to use as much bandwidth as possible with the GT200 GPU. I would also venture to say that GT300 (whenever it gets released) would be the first GPU completely incapable of running on AGP without an insane performance loss. Think of it this way....9400GT PCI has a reasonable level of performance....and regular PCI is slower than AGP. Why would companies continue to make newer PCI cards, if the bandwidth limit on AGP has been exceeded? Hell, I'm looking at picking up a 9500GT PCI for Win7 to run F@H on, since that would still leave my 4850 free to handle all graphics and then I wouldn't have to shutdown F@H to run WoW.
I don't understand why they're even bothering with an AGP model...even if the AGP interface didn't bottleneck the card, the processor would due to how old AGP is...hell, are they even making AGP motherboards anymore? You can't even find a POS EMachines with AGP in Best Buy σ_σ
I am pretty surprised about this if it is true. I have a fairly weird system. << Perhaps one of the few AGP rigs out there which could possibly see a decent benefit for this, the FX-60 dual core was a monster back in its day after all. but even then I wouldn't waste my time. I think the 3850 is the end of the line for me and AGP. But that said, people have been echoing the whole AGP is dead sentiment each time a new upgrade comes out for the dying bus, which seems to be taking an awfully long time to actually die and each time I upgrade I have been getting a very substantial performance increase without needing to fork out the time and money (mostly time) for a new PCI system. With the resale of my old cards my last two upgrades have been pretty efficient expenditure wise also for a large increase in performance. Currently I'm not gaming often and when I do its a bit of DOW2 maxed out settings on this rig, smooth as silk. so its still no slouch. The proof is in the pudding, I guess....
This isnt surprising to me, its marketing. Companies like to rape the noobs. That is why an Nvidia 6200 can still go for $60 even though current integrated GPU's (HD 3200's and Nvidia 9300's) are faster than that physical PCI card, but most non gamers dont know that and still think a "good" current generation PC costs thousands. It may be cruel, but gotta make money somehow.
Um, the link to the source states: Product Features * DirectX 10.1 support PCI ExpressR 2.0 x16 bus interface * Dual mode ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance * Game physics processing capability * Dynamic geometry acceleration Technical Details * Model: 1A1-G000004992 What's this about agp? Even if they release more agp cards, it's still better to go with pci-e in the long run.I won't buy another agp card. I think they keep making agp cards to boost sales so they can finance the top of the line technology.
You guys pay to much attention to this botleneck thing. It only gets bottlenecked if you play in very high resolutions, from 1280x1024 above. But since the old PC users are asumed also to have older monitors which top at 1280x1024, this disscussion is almost useless. For example back home I have my old PC running an Athlon XP 2500+ with 1GB DDR1 RAM and an Nvidia 6600GT-agp. I also have an 19" CRT on which I play all the games in 1152x864 because I can use 100Hz refresh rate. So my question is simple. Should I buy a 3850AGP video card, or this new 4770AGP card??? Simple.
It looks like there isn't going to be a 4770 agp version but, there is a 4650 agp on the market.Follow this thread for more info: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=296139
