PCI Express or 8X AGP?

A friend is helping me build a killer gaming PC. As for graphics, I'm not sure which is the best way to go: PCI Express or 8X AGP? I'm leaning toward PCI Express, but am not finding that old supported graphics platform page on the SL web site. Any thoughts?

PCI express is slightly faster I think. Though the cards are cheaper, and I don't know why.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/pcie.ars/

This is probably one of the best articles on PCI Express that I have seen.
PCI-e will be compatible with SL because PCI graphics cards are compatible with SL.

If I had the choice, I would go with a 16xPCI-e graphics card slot over an AGP slot. I don't know if this is still true, but I do know that it was very hard to get your hands on a high end PCI-e card from NVidea (The 6800 line), that may have changed though.

Either way, thats just my opinion, there are many that are of the opinion that you should stay with AGP until PCI-e proves itself more thoroughly in benchmark tests.

Read the article, it's long, and explains PCI and how PCI data communications work and has a lot of technical information about data communication, buses, bus speeds, etc... but it will give you a really good overview of what your getting and the advantages over AGP.

Hope I helped!
Jess

The main question is what do you have now and what do you want to spend? To get on the PCI e bandwagon you are likely going to have to change your moterboard and perhaps the CPU just to be able to install the $400 card. If you already have a decent motherboard and CPU with an AGP slot then it makes sense to drop in a 6600GT agp to get a couple more years out of your system. PCIe is the future but right now the difference isn't enough to write home about. In fact one set of tests showed the 6600GT AGP to be slightly faster in real world applications compared to the PCIe version.

One big advantage with converting to PCIe is the return of SLI. That is where you can link up two video cards to increase your graphic's performance. You can convert now buying one card then when the price drops you can buy a second card to boost performance for significantly less money.

Onfortunatly after spending $2000 or more you likely won't see a real big difference in SL.

I could never get behind SLI mode. As we saw with Voodoo II SLI, vid card technology advances pretty fast, and an equal single card solution will come along soon enough. For me its not worth the extra cash to gain a short term bump in performance.

If you are starting from scratch, PCI express could make sense. Otherwise, stick with AGP.

Well, the Voodoo II SLI solution never really took off because of cost and lackluster performance gains for the price.

The SLI performance in a card like the 6600gt has numbers that outperform the latest single card solution, the 6800E by a few percentage points.

Does it make sense to do it now? Not really because the combined cards cost more than the single 6800E. A year from now though, it may be a different story as the price of the card comes down. You may be able to pick up that second card for $50 on ebay thereby having the performance of a $500 card. Of course that $500 card may cost $200 by then but you can see a significant increase in performance for an additional $50 or so.

It's just something to consider.

Here is a Post I made last week:

/111/c8/33477/1.html

It covers a lot of the "what gfx card should I buy" info for the average user - and at the end of the post I linked to an Article on Tom's Hardware Guide.

The article also covers some PCI-e stuff; and there are a couple of articles on Tom's site that explain the differences between PCI-e & AGP.

Oh, and THG is a "guru" site for all kinds of high-end hardware reviews and info - from CPUs to Graphics, to Storage & more... really thorough site!

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

Cool! Thanks for all of the info, guys and gals. In my case, yes, we are building a system from scratch. A more experienced system builder is helping me out, and we needed to make the PCIe vs AGP decision before selecting the Asus motherboard we plan to use. He is working up an inventory list for me, and when I have all of the suggested components, I'll post a more precise components list here for you all to review for SL appropriateness. All I can say is that anything is going to be better than my 2-year old Sony VAIO!

Thanks, again!

From what I understand is that the processor and memory subsystems affect SL performance overall, then the next thing is video texture memory, then video card speed.

Hank -

Sorry, I would reverse the order you listed.

Graphics Hardware is the #1 Priority.

CPU is a very close second, as the video card and CPU are inter-dependant. But no matter how good your CPU is, a crappy Video-Card will make the game perform horribly. A good graphics-card with a mediocre CPU will perform better than a mediocre graphics card and a good CPU. A very slow CPU can "hold back" a very fast video card; but overall the video card is more important.

Large amounts of RAM on-board the video card allows for faster rendering when the objects in view use a lot of textures. You can render more distinct textures and at higher levels of detail, with more video RAM. Lower amounts of video RAM means your system has to "wait" while it swaps textures between the video card and the system RAM - which is a very slow operation, compared to calculating and displaying things.

More System RAM allows your computer to hold more information at the same time - and this is especially important if you have any other programs running at the same time as SL. Things like email programs, IM systems, virus-scanners, firewalls, etc. all eat into the available RAM and CPU time. When the system runs low on RAM, it "swaps" some memory out onto temporary files on the Hard-Drive. This is a very slow operation from the computer's perspective, compared to doing almost anything else... But most new systems these days come with around 512MB of RAM; which is plenty (for the moment). 256MB is acceptable, if a little bit low. Almost no new machines come with less than 256MB of RAM.

More is ALWAYS better with all computer hardware - but it all comes down to how much you're willing to pay; and realize that there are declining returns on investment, the more you spend (i.e. you may spend an extra $300 on something, to only get a 5% or 10% increase in performance - if your system is already really good).

Paolo -

If you are getting a new system, then PCI-E is probably the way to go. All of the major hardware manufacturers are implementing it; and it will only get better with time. Right now there is no advantage in PCI-E, but in the future there might be. Going with a PCI-E motherboard will give you more options to upgrade, later on.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)