AGP * 8

[electrorax]

with new mobos coming out soon with AGP*8 what will this mean in terms of performance? more frame rates? or just faster communication from the mainboard to the GPU board? and i guess the grahpics card must be AGP*8 compliant yes?

hope to hear some good things hopefully!

[SecretSquirrel]

AGP8x means the following. Faster access to texture memory that it not local to the card. Faster transfer of scene data to the card. Thats about it. Will it cause major improvements in framerates? Nope. With 128MB GFX cards on the way, the need for offboard texture memory is almost non-existent. Yes there may be some performance increase due to faster scene data transfers, but the limiting factor in performance is still the rate at which the card can render the scene.

[lenzenm]

The only real place where it may be important will be for integrated video chipsets, as they would (theoretically) have faster access to the shared main memory. AGP 4X (current max) is 66MHz * 32bits (or 4Bytes) * 4 (for AGP4X) = 1066MB/s. AGP 8X would be twice that, or 2132MB/s. Now since PC-2100 (133MHz/266MHz DDR) has a peak bandwidth of 2100MB/s (hence the name) this would be nearly the entire bandwidth of main memory.
In a board like the nForce, which has a full dedicated channel of DDR for the integrated video, it could actually mean something (right now the integrated GF2MX is limited to AGP 4X, and SDR bandwidth at that). A second-gen nForce board with an AGP 8X capable and DDR-RAM capalble integrated GF* could utilize all this available bandwidth. There are no boards that fit this description yet, so it is all theoretical. In all other cases, it is likely to mean very little.

[Vrock]

The most exciting feature in the AGP 3.0 spec IMO is the support for multiple AGP ports.

Picture GF3/4 SLI...the creamy smoothness..mmmmmm!

[newbie_of_jan0502]

If my motherboard (soyo dragon plus) is an AGP 1X 2X 4X PRO, does this mean I'll have to get a new one to be 8X? And what the hell is pro anyway?

[lenzenm]

On 2002-03-19 17:05, newbie_of_jan0502 wrote:
If my motherboard (soyo dragon plus) is an AGP 1X 2X 4X PRO, does this mean I'll have to get a new one to be 8X? And what the hell is pro anyway?

1) Yes, to have an AGP 8X capable motherboard, you would have to replace the Soyo.
2) An AGP-Pro compatible slot lacks the "notch" you see in older AGP slots, and the pins in this location are utilized for supplying additional power to professional-workstation caliber cards. A non-pro AGP 4X card will fit in it just fine.

[timm]

Vrock, any ETA on when 3.0 AGP specs are suppoused to see the light of the day? (or, rather, when are WE going to be able to actually pick up a board that has multiple AGP ports?)

That would be hella sweet. I'd love to be able to slap in my old Matrox G450, and hook it up to a secondary 21". Screen real estate is something I can never get enough of.

[dolemitecomputers]

Hmmmm. Dual AGP.......

[Vrock]

On 2002-03-28 11:26, timm wrote:
Vrock, any ETA on when 3.0 AGP specs are suppoused to see the light of the day?

Wish I knew. I'm not an industry insider. But I do know that Intel hasn't posted the final AGP 3.0 spec yet, they still have the draft spec on their site...

[q_bot_w11]

Oooo, multi AGP slots

*Thinks multi-mon*

Will SLI link things start to appear again like voodoo 2s?

2 Geforce 4 Ti 4600 would be quite beasty I suppose