The future of Agp

[SalmonMan]

Does anyone know what the future holds for the progression of agp cards? If I were to upgrade soon and get an agp motherboard, I fear that I'll never be able to get a much better graphics card than the one I had bought in the upgrade unless I upgrade the mobo along with it. Does anyone know anything about whether ATI will continue to support agp, or if their new new cards beyond the x800 series will be PCI E only? If I buy an athlon64 3000+ with an asus mobo and a gig or corsair ram, I'll only have enough money for a 9800 pro, but if I wanted to get a new video card in the future, I would probably have to go with one of the upper x800's or 6800 due to the lack of any more agp boards being released, unless of course they do continue to support better agp boards.

Basically, I'm wondering if anyone knows whether Ati and nvidia will continue to make agp boards in their new generations of cards (better than what they have now), or if they will be strictly going with PCI-E from now on. I'm wondering this because if Ati is already making pci-e exclusive boards (x800 platinum), they would continue doing that with their future cards.

All opinions are welcome.

 

[bosox188]

They're still gonna make AGP cards, PCI-E won't be needed until maybe 2 years from now. Athlon 64 and 9800 pro sounds good, get it.

 

[SalmonMan]

They're still gonna make AGP cards, PCI-E won't be needed until maybe 2 years from now. Athlon 64 and 9800 pro sounds good, get it.

How long do you think the setup would last me, or at least how long do you think the video card will last before I'd have to upgrade it?

Thanks for your help so far

 

[Illegal Amigo]

I would wait until PCI-E becomes the standard. Agp is just fine for now. There are things (like RD Ram, for instance) taht never took off, and people stuck iwth that hardware end up paying through the nose for upgrades.

 

[Asus]

They were planing on making this set of cards the last AGP set. Although reality set in along with demand (or lack there of) and there will be future generations of AGP cards, but how long is unknown.

If they release new cards next year during the spring that they could be PCI-Express only while this years Fall refresh will have AGP in the mix. They would have a number of boards out with PCI-Express support for both platforms by then. That is the earliest though. All guesses of coures.

AGP won't die anytime soon though.

 

[Illegal Amigo]

That would mean, of course, that the AGP flagship prices will go way down. Like x800's down... (or are those PCI E?)

 

[Malfunction]

In this PC Hardware magazine, every year they build a Dream machine, usually costing double/triple what the average gamer owns. This year it came to about $12,000! This is what some of the builders and magazine editors have to say about the future:

"...8gb will be coomonplace, the mainstream video cards will come from the company nVidATI (the two companies will merge in 2008) and will feature 2gb of memory onboard, which will allow computers to run Half-Life 4 like buttah..."

 

[sHaDdoW]

i hope nvidia and ati don't merge becouse there will be no compitition and they will put the prices up

 

[Champ]

I'm buying a motherboard that support PCI-E it's only 10$ more than one without.

 

[Revisedsoul]

they will pull a apple/mircosoft

 

[bosox188]

I'm wondering if the AGP versions of the new cards will drop in price. Because when I got my 5200 in February, the PCI version actually cost $30 more than the AGP version. I hope the AGP cards' prices don't go up.