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agp vs pci e , which one is better? Also I hear pci cards can break down easier than agp. And I heard agp slower, but better graphics. Any opinions?

the cards themselves are pretty much the same...the bridges to AGP for native-PCI-E cards don't really take away much performance...the quality of the cards won't make a difference AGP vs. PCI-E...it's all about the QC of the manufacturer...performance-wise, it really doesn't matter either...graphics cards can't really saturate an 8x (much less a 4x) AGP slot anyway, so the speedier PCI-E isn't helpful at the moment...maybe down the line, but not now
something nice about PCI-E is that it can provide alot more power to the cards through the mobo, and so for cards like the 6600gt, you don't need the molex connector....mostly for the midrange, but still nice

PCI-Express allow produce twice bandwidth of 20GB/sec x16 than AGPx8. But AGPx8 still faster bandwidth...IMHO

EDIT: Also however I'm most perfer AGP version...PCI-Express are okay for me.

Skyline57GTR wrote:

PCI-Express allow produce twice bandwidth of 20GB/sec x16 than AGPx8. But AGPx8 still faster bandwidth...IMHO

Uh, what? AGP 8x is 2.1GB/sec to the card (much lower going from the card to system memory). Each PCI-E lane offers 2Gbps, or 250MB/sec, in each direction. Thus PCI-E x16 offers 4GB/sec to and from the card, or roughly twice as much as AGP8x. As Usacomp2k3 says, that's kind of academic because most GPUs don't see much difference between AGP4x and AGP8x. The symmetrical bidirectional bandwidth is interesting for some non-graphical applications, and we may see games start using it (to store computed textures, for instance), but the reality is that GDDR is still so much faster that games are still written to try to keep all textures on the card and not dip into main memory. Once DX10-class hardware arrives with paged virtual texture fragments, the off-card bandwidth will start to matter.

Today, there is very little difference. You can get state-of-the-art graphics performance with either one (unless you've got near-infinite funds, and are looking at spending big $$ for dual PCI-Express graphics cards and a PCI-Express SLI motherboard that supports them properly).

PCI-Express is a bit more future-proof. AGP will probably end up costing you a bit less for equivalent performance, since it is the established "tried and true" tech.

Yep, mostly to reiterate. AGP is simply the old standard which IMHO will be around for this year but getting quite rare afterwards. PCI-E's extra bandwidth is wasted, as said even AGP8x's bandwidth was overkill. However PCIe does deliver more power to the card (so fewer messy power cables), enables cards to work in tandem (eg SLI) and can enable funky things like TurboCache (which adds system RAM to the small gfx card RAM). The capabilities and quality of a card is not dependent upon AGP or PCI-E unless there's a brige chip (to convert AGP to PCI-E or vice versa) which can add heat or unreliability, though this is rarely an issue.

If you're buying a mobo and plan to upgrade the gfx in a year or two then PCI-E makes more sense. If you're unlikely to upgrade for 3+ years then it won't matter much either way as you'd really be looking at a new mobo anyway.

UberGerbil wrote:

Skyline57GTR wrote:

PCI-Express allow produce twice bandwidth of 20GB/sec x16 than AGPx8. But AGPx8 still faster bandwidth...IMHO

Uh, what? AGP 8x is 2.1GB/sec to the card (much lower going from the card to system memory). Each PCI-E lane offers 2Gbps, or 250MB/sec, in each direction. Thus PCI-E x16 offers 4GB/sec to and from the card, or roughly twice as much as AGP8x. As Usacomp2k3 says, that's kind of academic because most GPUs don't see much difference between AGP4x and AGP8x. The symmetrical bidirectional bandwidth is interesting for some non-graphical applications, and we may see games start using it (to store computed textures, for instance), but the reality is that GDDR is still so much faster that games are still written to try to keep all textures on the card and not dip into main memory. Once DX10-class hardware arrives with paged virtual texture fragments, the off-card bandwidth will start to matter.

Well, what about AGPx8 PRO?

Tech Report Front Page wrote:

Legion Hardware on AMD PCI Express vs. AGP

here

Skyline57GTR wrote:

Well, what about AGPx8 PRO?

AFAIK all that does is add additional power pins.