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Is there an AMD64 SFF with PCI-express? If not, is there one coming before the end of the year?

It seems all the GPU's I'd really like are all in PCI-express for now (6600GT, X700)

You probably won't have many PCI-e choices in SFF's for AMD64 until the actual chipsets get into the supply channel in a big way...AFAIK the K8T890 and the NF4 aren't exactly easy to find.

Your not the only one waiting, but AMD chipset that have PCI are rare period let alone SFF.

Going with PCIe in a SFF is rather pointless, as there are no PCIe cards except for video. So you would end up with a slot you would not be able to use, as there are no PCIe 1X cards yet.

Starfalcon wrote:

Going with PCIe in a SFF is rather pointless, as there are no PCIe cards except for video. So you would end up with a slot you would not be able to use, as there are no PCIe 1X cards yet.

pointless? I specifically said I wanted it for the GPU.

It seems this generation of GPUs are mostly (especially on the ATI side) pci-express first and AGP later.

Why exactly do you want PCIe for graphic cards? Future compatability? By the time AGP 8x has reached its limit of usefulness (Which I don't recall seeing it lagging behind PCIe with identical cores), and PCIe will be necessary, you'll be looking at DDR2 different socketed athlon64 cores, I'd bet.

Zenith wrote:

Why exactly do you want PCIe for graphic cards? Future compatability? By the time AGP 8x has reached its limit of usefulness (Which I don't recall seeing it lagging behind PCIe with identical cores), and PCIe will be necessary, you'll be looking at DDR2 different socketed athlon64 cores, I'd bet.

Yes, but by this time next year you won't be able to find a "latest tech" top-end graphics card in anything other than PCI-E. If you plan on keeping your mobo for more than 2 years, and you expect to buy another top of the line graphics card in that timeframe, you want to get PCI-E. You'll be able to find mid-range cards, even using the latest chips, but the top end is going PCI-E only, very quickly. It's not about performance, it's about availability.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't expect to see an AMD SFF with PCI-E actually available for sale before the end of the year.

UberGerbil wrote:

Zenith wrote:

Why exactly do you want PCIe for graphic cards? Future compatability? By the time AGP 8x has reached its limit of usefulness (Which I don't recall seeing it lagging behind PCIe with identical cores), and PCIe will be necessary, you'll be looking at DDR2 different socketed athlon64 cores, I'd bet.

Yes, but by this time next year you won't be able to find a "latest tech" top-end graphics card in anything other than PCI-E. If you plan on keeping your mobo for more than 2 years, and you expect to buy another top of the line graphics card in that timeframe, you want to get PCI-E. You'll be able to find mid-range cards, even using the latest chips, but the top end is going PCI-E only, very quickly. It's not about performance, it's about availability.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't expect to see an AMD SFF with PCI-E actually available for sale before the end of the year.

I dont think that is true. Why would nVidia or ATI eliminate a HUGE part of the high end market and sell only PCIe? AGP itself is more than capable of providing any necessary bandwidth for a long time to come. The jump from 4x agp to 8x agp even produced marginal if any performance increases, despite doubling bandwidth. I think it would be a mistake to cut out AGP at the top end in a year. What drives these companies are the bottom lines, and excluding AGP customers will impact their bottom lines.

sroylance wrote:

Is there an AMD64 SFF with PCI-express? If not, is there one coming before the end of the year?

It seems all the GPU's I'd really like are all in PCI-express for now (6600GT, X700)

I too am waiting for this........where in Boston are you from? I live in Braintree. founded in 1640

random gerbil wrote:

I dont think that is true. Why would nVidia or ATI eliminate a HUGE part of the high end market and sell only PCIe? AGP itself is more than capable of providing any necessary bandwidth for a long time to come. The jump from 4x agp to 8x agp even produced marginal if any performance increases, despite doubling bandwidth. I think it would be a mistake to cut out AGP at the top end in a year. What drives these companies are the bottom lines, and excluding AGP customers will impact their bottom lines.

I agree that business decisions generally trump technical decisions, and AGP bandwidth is more than adequate for now and the near future. But the class of customer who pays $400+ for a top-end video card is rapidly moving to PCI-E -- because it's the latest thing, because they're buying motherboards that are PCI-E only, or because they're the kind of people who will pay top dollar for any ounce of performance and they think PCI-E is better. OEMs (see Dell, in particular) are quickly going PIC-E-only also, because the latest chipsets from Intel use it (and the latest AMD-oriented chipsets soon will). nVidia especially wants you to move away from AGP because that gives them a chance to sell you at least one new video card per computer and maybe two. Vendors and distributors hate dealing with multiple permutations of product; maintaing both AGP and PCI-E means multiplying SKUs by two. That's an expense they want to avoid, so they have a strong incentive to move to exclusively PCI-E as soon as possible. And finally, the PCI-E spec supports up to 75W per slot (there's even a revised version of the spec under review that will allow 150w) which the graphics cards need; you wouldn't think it would matter, but not having to put a separate power connector on each card saves them money.

UberGerbil - There will be AGP components of most major graphic cards for at least a year, as what I see from NV. By then, any major upgrade would most likely be to a new socket Athlon64 with DDRII.

UberGerbil wrote:

And finally, the PCI-E spec supports up to 75W per slot (there's even a revised version of the spec under review that will allow 150w) which the graphics cards need; you wouldn't think it would matter, but not having to put a separate power connector on each card saves them money.

By this time next year they will have exceeded the 75W and will have seperate connectors anyway. Lol, i think thats kinda funny. Soon after that it will prob draw as much as a single CPU.

The issue is (or was, because I mae my decision and bought a shuttle xpc sn95g5) some of the mid-range vid cards I'm interested in (600gt, x700 and probably the new x8?00's) are available in pci-e and not in agp right now. Odds are good I will not ever upgrade the vid card by itself, so it's much more about what cards I can get right now, not anything in the future.

jedi:
I work in Boston but I live way out in Athol.

6600GT not available in AGP? *stares at the 6600GT AGP card in his computer* Wow...coulda fooled me.

I thought AGP cards would be around for a good while, but ATI is certianly proving me wrong. I am scared that the next generation of cards will have limited AGP availability from both Nvidia and ATI. At this point, I would wait for PCIe, it will only be another month until nf4s are in wide distribution. Although SFFs might lag another month beyond that...

Next year at this time there might be one AGP version of the next generation card, at the $200 retail sweet spot. There will also probably be a couple options in $100 cheap cards, probably remainders based on the current gen (similar to the 9x00's today).

I'll try and get this post back on track.

A P-series Shuttle XPC supporting nForce4 will be unveiled at CES early January, and available for purchase later that month. nForce4 (ultra? not really sure) will support PCI-Express. So just sit on your hands for a while. That's what I'm going to do.

Oh btw, I've been told it will be christened the SN25P.