is agp4x is enough for 6800Ultra?

[radunovicL]

I haven't decide yet which card I'm going to buy, 6800Ultra or r420XT. Today I got my new PSU 560W from Thermaltake (it comes with wire management) really great PSU. Basically, I'm ready...
My motherboard supports only agp4x. Is it going to be enough for 6800Ultra or r420XT ?

[CaptNKILL]

Im sure AGP 4x is fine, but i have to ask, if its limited to that, what chipset\CPU are you running? AGP 8x has been out for years now, if your motherboard doesnt support it, the rest of your system may be a serious bottleneck for such a high end card.

[radunovicL]

I have Asus P4T533 768MB RDRAM PC1066-32bit it gives 4.2GB/s memory bandwidth. Also I have P4 3.06@3075Mhz...
I think the system is enough, and it can hold cards such GFX6800Ultra or r420.

I'm going to replace 256mem module with 512, so that will make 1Gb of memory, and that's going to be enough till Longhorn release. Of course, this is going to be the latest video upgrade, and it should perform well till 2006 and Longhorn release.

Today I got new thermaltake 560W PSU. Right now, I'm using Aspire Turbo 500W and I have feeling that this PSU once I connect 6800Ultra will blow out :retard:

Thanks for your info...

[-=DVS=-]

Short answer AGP 4x is plenty and so is Pentium 4 3ghz , should not be a big bottleneck.
As for power supply good quality 350W would suffice im sure , Nvidia sure did scare people :rofl

[SuLinUX]

Problem with 4x is that it may well stutter, thoese two cards are going to be powerful. To put it another way you will get a smoother ride with agp 8x than 4x.

[Gator]

P4 3ghz, 768mb RDRAM, AGP4x should be fine for an FX6800Ultra. You may not wanna go beyond 1280x1024 resolution though, because higher resolutions with high textures is when AGP8x really comes in handy. But so long as your screen resolution is reasonable, I don't expect you to notice any problems using that video card :)

Just make sure your power supply is adequate!!! :spank:

[Drumphil]

unless cards actually start using direct memory texture execution (or whatever its called), i don't see agp being the limitation on 3d performance, or pci express after that. It will take a wholesale change in the way 3d cards store and move information to change the balance of bottlenecks as it stands... which will probably happen, but when? Not likely in the next few years.

[shinrai]

If i remember correctly X8 AGP only has about a 1-2% gain over X4. It was X4 over X2 that had the bigger jump. Anyway Drumphil is right. I do not belive games are programmed to take advantage of the gap for textures just. it's just there allow the graphics card to say hello a little bit quicker to the cpu.

[Stevia]

Problem with 4x is that it may well stutter, thoese two cards are going to be powerful. To put it another way you will get a smoother ride with agp 8x than 4x.

Not true, so far with current gen cards, non have shown any benefit to having 8x over 4x. Until graphic cards actually fully utilize the agp4x bandwidth, there should be no difference between 4 and 8x. However the new 6800U and r420 has yet to be tested for any bottle necks on a 4x/8x comparison. So sit tight and wait for the official reviews which should reveal weather or not 4x is has been fully taped.

[SuLinUX]

Not true, so far with current gen cards, non have shown any benefit to having 8x over 4x. Until graphic cards actually fully utilize the agp4x bandwidth, there should be no difference between 4 and 8x. However the new 6800U and r420 has yet to be tested for any bottle necks on a 4x/8x comparison. So sit tight and wait for the official reviews which should reveal weather or not 4x is has been fully taped.

More FPS it may not be but the fact is that 8x allows more data to be transfer through the AGP bus, more data, a more smoother ride.

[Riptide]

4x bandwidth is plenty. 8x shows almost no improvements in any benchmarks I've seen, which makes sense. Seeing as DIME (texturing in main memory) is what all that bandwidth was supposed to be for in the first place, and it never gets used (local RAM on the card is much faster ofcourse) then most of that bandwidth just goes to waste anyway. Hence, 4x and 8x perform nearly identical.

I expect PCI Express video cards probably won't perform much quicker than their 8x AGP counterparts either. For the same reason. Benchmarks will prove me right on this, I bet. Especially when they do 880XT and 800XT comparisons once both those cards are available.

[Stevia]

8x allows more data to be transfer through the AGP bus, more data, a more smoother ride

Theoretically yes, to bad in real world it makes no difference. Until the Graphic cards actually use up 4x, how can 8x show any improvement?

[SuLinUX]

Theoretically yes, to bad in real world it makes no difference. Until the Graphic cards actually use up 4x, how can 8x show any improvement?

If you read what I said then you will see that I said It would'nt nessasarly increase fps but more like it would be less jerking and stuttering, thats what I meant by a smoother ride.

[Stevia]

it would be less jerking and stuttering, thats what I meant by a smoother ride.


I know what you meant, my point is that I have yet to see any of these claims, nor have I seen any information to back those statements up/ How does it jerk or stutter more on agp4x, if it's bandwidth is not limited by the card?

[SuLinUX]

I know what you meant, my point is that I have yet to see any of these claims, nor have I seen any information to back those statements up/ How does it jerk or stutter more on agp4x, if it's bandwidth is not limited by the card?


More data that can pass through the AGP bus on 8x, it's a known fact that the AGP bus is a rather big bottleneck, data transfer and speed are to different things.

If I restrict the amount of blood to your heart every so often you stutter yourself, hyperphetically speaking.

[Edge]

More data that can pass through the AGP bus on 8x, it's a known fact that the AGP bus is a rather big bottleneck, data transfer and speed are to different things.

If I restrict the amount of blood to your heart every so often you stutter yourself, hyperphetically speaking.

That WOULD be the case...except that the AGP bus really isn't a bottleneck for most data transfer. It might decrease loading times (where texture data is sent to the card) a little, but for actual performance it has almost no impact, since often there is a very miniscule amount of data being sent to the card while you're actually playing the game. I've noticed no major (or even minor) differances in framerate or loading times between running my TI4200 in 2x and 4x modes, even when I'm using more textures than what my card can hold. It's kinda like building a 4-lane highway even though the road only had an average of 10 cars per minute to begin with.

[Riptide]

To answer the original question posed in the title of this thread: yes.

There, thread closed. :D

[Edge]

To answer the original question posed in the title of this thread: yes.

There, thread closed. :D

Are you forgetting where you are? This is nvnews.net, we don't answer things so simply :rolleyes:

[radunovicL]

Why we move to PCI Express if AGP4x is not even fully explored? :retard:

[Edge]

Because PCI Express is more of a general bandwidth boost (not just for video cards), and will (hopefully) replace the now-standard PCI slot. However the extra speed is quite useless for video cards, it's little more than a marketing ploy for forcing people to upgrade their video card when the new motherboards no longer have an AGP slot. By the time videocards actually need PCI Express bandwidth...well...they'll probably have come up with a replacement for PCI Express by then. But, eh, that's how technology works.

[-=DVS=-]

We move to PCI-Express so we would not need 10 molex connectors for future cards :retard: PCI-E supplys 75W i think :p from 30W or so on regular AGP i might be off by few points.

[bkswaney]

I'm glad PCI-E is here.
I HATE having to use bloddy molex connectors.

[Gator]

I'm glad PCI-E is here.
I HATE having to use bloddy molex connectors.

you'll still need it, just not 2 of them. I think that FX6800 uses well above 100watts of power, so if PCI-E only supplies 75watts it wouldn't be enough :(

I know, the molex connector thing is annoying :spank: