X800 and Pci express

[Gajdycz]

now, intel has already said that they have pci mobo coming out. woot. but they have 2 cons:

1.new set of processor, they use dimples instead of pins, to make connections faster(?).

2. no agp.

now, it would be nice to have the agp so i could use my 9800pro until i get money for the next ati lineup after the x800, i want second generation tech.

now, i need u guys to help me in my buying desicions. if i get a new mobo soon with pci express, ill have to get; an new processor (amd or intel), new vid card, and maybe ram. give me a long term plan.

edit: heres something to chew on

http://intel.com/design/motherbd/cv/index.htm?iid=ipp_dlc_deskmb+desktopbd_d925xcv&

 

[blahblahblah]

I would stay away from PCI express for a while. It is starting to sound like the platform (PCI express) needs some time before hardware and software can take full advantage of it.

What are your current specs?

 

[Gajdycz]

ok, right now i have a

P4 3 ghz intel processor
512 Ram, soon to be 1gig
and the 9800pro with 128mb
intel perl mobo 865 chipset with 1 agp and 5 pci
and i may be getting an Audigy 2 ZS sound card

hey blah, u seem knowledgeable, what is the amd match to my processor?

 

[Dr. Freeman]

ok, right now i have a

P4 3 ghz intel processor
512 Ram, soon to be 1gig
and the 9800pro with 128mb
intel perl mobo 865 chipset with 1 agp and 5 pci
and i may be getting an Audigy 2 ZS sound card

hey blah, u seem knowledgeable, what is the amd match to my processor?

u have a nice machine there... why do u wanna upgrade that?!
seriously.. ur probably gonna just be wasting money by upgrading right now.

 

[psyno]

Unless money isn't a problem for you at all, I say you'd be nuts to get a new mobo/proc/graphics card/RAM considering the system that you already have. Can you give us the particulars of your motherboard and RAM?

If you're going to do anything, I think you should probably only be looking at a new AGP graphics card.

BTW, I wouldn't say you need to stay away from PCIe particularly, there's just no compelling reason to go out of your way to move to it at the moment. If I were building a system right now, and there was a chipset for the AMD platform with PCIe support (which of course there isn't yet), that's how I'd go, personally.

 

[Gajdycz]

no, im saying in like a year or two.

 

[psyno]

All right, long-term plan: maintain your current system for a while. If you want something small, that you can reasonably justify, like more RAM, that would probably be ok. Don't buy a new mobo or proc. If I were you, I probably wouldn't invest in a new graphics card.

In a year or so, see what AMD and Intel are putting forward in the way of multi-core chips. AMD has the lead so far (they recently taped out a multi-core chip) but it's difficult to speculate much about performance right now, except to say that I have high hopes for AMD's offering. By then, DDR2 will either have shown its worth at higher clock speeds, or continued to disappoint, PCI-Express will have shown if there are many worthy applications, as well as be supported for the AMD platform, and AMD will have moved to 90 nm fab and be eyeing 65 nm.

If you're hooked on Windows, a good time to upgrade would be at the launch of the upcoming Microsoft OS codenamed Longhorn. By then there should be graphics cards out in anticipation of DirectX Next, etc.

 

[Gajdycz]

ok, but look at my website at the top of the thread, 240 pin RAM?

 

[bosox188]

So far the benches have shown no real difference between AGP and PCI-E. Sometimes AGP even beats PCI-E by a fps or two.

 

[Asus]

You have to understand that they are on totally different systems. PCI-E doesn't loose to AGP. The platform with PCI-E looses to the platform that uses AGP. Although there is no reason to think PCI-E is better yet since GFX cards cannot even take advantage of 8X AGP.

No reason today to spring for a PCI Express system just yet. Link

 

[blahblahblah]

Yes, I would keep your system as is (with the upgrade to 1 gig of RAM). Your current system will be more than enough to ride out all of the next generation games like Doom 3 and Half-life 2.

Next year, I would take a look at upgrading your computer. Hopefully, by that time we will know what is going on with DDR 2, BTX, and have a new graphics card that better utilizes PCI-E. Even waiting to 2006 could be a better idea as a new version of windows comes out, DX 10 comes out (and appropriate hardware), and dual core processors from AMD and Intel.

Right now, a lot of hardware standards are starting to become obsolete (Parallel ATA, AGP, DDR 1, possible ATX). Waiting till all of those new standards comes out will make for easier upgrading.

An equivalent AMD processor to yours would be an Athlon XP 3200+, or an Athlon 64 2800

 

[psyno]

ok, but look at my website at the top of the thread, 240 pin RAM?

The motherboard you linked to uses Intel's 925 chipset, which has only DDR2 support and no DDR (DDR1) support. DDR2 uses a 240 contact interface. If you were going to use that motherboard, you'd need to get new DDR2 RAM. Your current motherboard on the 865 chipset uses 184 contact DDR RAM.

DDR2 is meant to be able to scale to higher clock speeds, but thus far its higher latency has held it from outperforming DDR, which has scaled beyond the highest clock speeds that anyone expected. Right now DDR2's only real advantage is reduced power usage, at the expense of performance and a higher price tag.

 

[bosox188]

Really right now the only use for PCI-E is for video editing and stuff, I guess with those Ati Fire GL and Nividia Quadro FX cards?

 

[Gajdycz]

thanks, now for the tech question, why is amd faster? i donnt want to hear "der!, cause they are!. im looking for the "it has to do with the configuration of the vertx pipelines, or something".

 

[psyno]

Der, which faster than which?

Just in general, Intel has been relying on longer pipelines to clock their chips up more and this has proven not to be optimal for games, especially in the case of a cache miss. Also, putting the memory controller on the chip has relieved a major bottleneck (the FSB) for AMD's new generation. Add AMD's 3DNow! instruction sets to that, and there you go... :bounce:

 

[Asus]

I'll make this easy and just post a link.
Scroll down to rower30's post and read. He copied that out of a book and posted it.
Link

Thought I'd add that with AMD's new 64Bit CPUs, the memory is much closer to the CPU for much lower latency, the memory controller runs at the CPU's speed, and the FSB is not bottlenecked from the rest of the system and memory which would otherwise all travel on the FSB to CPU. AMD64 has the memory on a separate path than the rest of the system.
Here's a pic.