Shoutbox

quote:

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Originally posted by Scone
John Anderton..

Yes, it is.. PCI-e is the new technology, AGP is simply outdated.. PCI-e is faster and its just better.. So yes its worth getting one with half the memory i think...
For me that wouldnt work i have an AGP board.. Which annoys me, at the time i couldnt afford PCI-e (it was about a week old) But if you have a PCI-e board go for it.

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Thanks Thats 5 votes out of 5 for pci-e

quote:

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Originally posted by John Anderton
I am also looking to buy one. Im willing to spend around 6000 INR (i have to buy other things too) (6000 Indian rupees = 133.3032 U.S. dollars = 106.959159 Euro = 177.029482 Australian dollars)

A Nvdia GeForce 6200 256 Mb (AGP Card) costs 4000 INR for me
A Nvdia GeForce 6600 128 Mb (PCI-E Card) costs 5800 INR for me

My question is it worth giving more money and getting a 128mb pci-e card rather than a 256mb agp card ??

Ive heard from 2 people that it is .... i seriously need a view asap

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Well... then I'll be the first to say "no it isn't worth it"

That is to say:

It highly depends on what you're planning todo when you buy another computer in the futur. Are you going to use the graphics cards from the old PC (thus, the card you're going to buy now) or not? If not, and you decide you would buy an entire new PC (as PC's would be much faster by then and even newer technology has come out), then I do not see any reason why buying a PCI-E over an AGP one would be "better".

Performance wise (unless you're a hardcore tweaker/game junkie... but then again, if you are you wouldn't buy these GeForce's in this category) there is no real difference between them. Moreover (but I can be wrong in this one, though I doubt it), the AGP one has more cache memory than the PCI-E one. And that is a big factor in performance. So PCI-E may be in theory faster than AGP when comparing only the bus speed, but I very highly doubt you would see much overall difference in everyday use in this case (except in your wallet)...

I would look in very much detail at benchmarks of these exact cards (not a card with same type of processor, but higher memory, etc... but exact same cards and in the exact same benchmark tests), and only buy the PCI-E one if and only if it shows a very massive increase in performance over the AGP one (afterall we're talking about 50% more in costs pricewise; I wouldn't pay 50% if it only 'ticks' slightly faster).

Using newest technology is not always better!!!!! It highly depends on what you are going todo with it, now and in the futur.

eg: if you're planning to upgrade your entire PC (aka motherboard) soonish, then I would buy the PCI-E one (and maybe even one in a higher category), if not, stick with the cheaper one, it would work equally well and you have some spare money to spend on something else (eg: a dinner with a nice girl ).

i have a Inno3D GeForce FX5200 256 MB, its PCI-E...i was thinkin of the same cards as John Anderton. i wanna know that would these cards be better than the card i have right now, performance wise?

I've got me one of these.. Runs pretty sweet in most games, FEAR struggles a bit on high though. It is AGP, so if you have a PCI-E slot on your motherboard it won't help you unless you buy an adapter (and that'd cause a bottleneck, because the chip is actually PCI-E, there's a PCI-E -> AGP Bridge in it).

But for < £100 you can't really do better.

as you're in UK, just look around on places like
www.ebuyer.co.uk
www.overclockers.co.uk
www.misco.co.uk
www.dabs.co.uk (i dont like dabs. they suck at delivering tbh)

all of them have some cheap options, you can probably get some 6600's for close to £50 now somewhere, or something close to a 6600 anyway if you jsut look around for the lower spec ones, but if you want to play games then you should get something like a 6800 at least, but they're not too expensive anymore anyway..

(btw, i dont like ati ;p)

hmm after looking at cards, its made me want a new one, my 6800 is old now

think i'll get http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/107323/rb/18632720107 ;p

For about £70/£80 you can buy a ATi Radeon 9800. Its a good card for its price.

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Well... then I'll be the first to say "no it isn't worth it"

That is to say:

It highly depends on what you're planning todo when you buy another computer in the futur. Are you going to use the graphics cards from the old PC (thus, the card you're going to buy now) or not? If not, and you decide you would buy an entire new PC (as PC's would be much faster by then and even newer technology has come out), then I do not see any reason why buying a PCI-E over an AGP one would be "better".

Performance wise (unless you're a hardcore tweaker/game junkie... but then again, if you are you wouldn't buy these GeForce's in this category) there is no real difference between them. Moreover (but I can be wrong in this one, though I doubt it), the AGP one has more cache memory than the PCI-E one. And that is a big factor in performance. So PCI-E may be in theory faster than AGP when comparing only the bus speed, but I very highly doubt you would see much overall difference in everyday use in this case (except in your wallet)...

I would look in very much detail at benchmarks of these exact cards (not a card with same type of processor, but higher memory, etc... but exact same cards and in the exact same benchmark tests), and only buy the PCI-E one if and only if it shows a very massive increase in performance over the AGP one (afterall we're talking about 50% more in costs pricewise; I wouldn't pay 50% if it only 'ticks' slightly faster).

Using newest technology is not always better!!!!! It highly depends on what you are going todo with it, now and in the futur.

eg: if you're planning to upgrade your entire PC (aka motherboard) soonish, then I would buy the PCI-E one (and maybe even one in a higher category), if not, stick with the cheaper one, it would work equally well and you have some spare money to spend on something else (eg: a dinner with a nice girl ).

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Cookie: Here are a few things ...
Im getting a new pc.
I do want to play most games at full graphics cause ive been waiting for soooo long to do so since my current one is shit. So i want a good card that can probably last me 2-3 years letting me play games smoothly and a relatively high level ? I hope thats not asking too much. I love playing games but no im not a tweaker or a hard core gamer. Ill probably put in an hour or so during univ and about 4-5 during my off time but thats it ....
Basically thats the only thing that i want ... it should last me well (meaning it should work with the latest games well enough for atleast 3 years) But i dont want to be troubled in say a year and a half's time stating that my card isnt compatible. Cause its been 4 years now with this pc (which was my first so i didnt know that much hardware before buying it). It probably going to be another 4-5 years till i move out of my house after i finish my studies and get my own pc. So the one that im planning to buy should do relatively well till then with a few minor upgrades like ram if needed (1gb ddr 2 ought to do well for now i think )

So based on that, what would your analysis be ?

Edit: A graphics card upgrade wouldnt be considered "minor"
6000+INR isnt minor 512 mb ddr 2 ram however costs around 2250 so its another question all together

What I said still stands though... PCI-E or AGP doesn't make a difference as far as "compatibility with (new) games" is concearned. The difference is in how the computer 'talks' to the card.

For the game it doesn't matter if it is a AGP, PCI-E or whatever new thing will come out in a few years, it is the chipset used and/or the compatible DirectX version and other graphical CPU/features related stuff. And all that can both be done on AGP as with PCI-E. The game doesn't care what bus type the card uses, as long as the card supports the features the game needs.

This said, newer cards come of course with newer technology, which games might* use. And newer cards are often only made with the newer bus technology (thus no more AGP) in mind. But if you compare the exact same card, with the exact same graphical CPU and features, but with a different bus type (AGP vs. PCI-E), the game will run just as well without any quality loss or whatever.

* New games will almost never use the new technology available at the moment. This is actually very logically. If a game would only use the latest special and newest technology, there wouldn't be much games sold.

What will influence your game quality more (or at least equaly) is your computer processor speed, available memory, cache and harddisk speed and/or cdrom speed, not so much what type of bus the graphic cards is (a system is only as fast as the slowest component, and that is almost never the graphics card!).

So, it is still a matter of how much money you want to spend (aka: do you want to pay 50% more for just the same card, but with an other bus type?) versus what does your (futur) motherboard support.

To cap of: "I want my game to run with all the graphic stuff it can throw at me" isn't a reason to decide between PCI-E or AGP, as bus types don't matter in that case. It's the features and used chipsets of the card that matters. If the needed chipset is only available as an PCI-E card, buy it... if it is also available as an AGP card (and your futur motherboard will still support AGP!), then there is nothing wrong in sticking with AGP and your game will run just as smooth.

Then what the hell is the benefit of PCI-E? Well, as a matter of fact, you'll find many reviews which will say that PCI-E isn't that great afterall (taking the sometimes huge price difference in account). The PCI-E bus is faster though, and this means, in theory!, faster processing of graphical stuff. It also means that PCI-E cards don't need to 'work' as much as their equivalent AGP versions or to put it in another way: it can process, again in theory!, more information for the same timeframe. But all this is theory. Games from today don't really use (yet) all of the possible benefits PCI-E could offer and even if they did, there are far... far more bothlenecks in the whole pc which will slowdown any gained speed again.

Benchmarks will often show that PCI-E cards are much faster, but benchmarks aren't everything. Benchmarks are tests done under labo-conditions. There isn't something like a "everyday usage-benchmark" at all, despite what some might make you believe. This is simply because every system is different and everybody uses his own system differently or has different things running. In other words, doing a test on configuration A and comparing it with configuration B will say not much (in fact nothing at all) about 1 specific component.
A benchmark is a benchmark only when everything (including software) is exactly the same and used exactly the same. Benchmarks are just that, theoretical comparissons done under labo-conditions.
Vice versa this is true also; a benchmark between two different components but with the exact same used PC system will again not say anything at all about everyday-usage of that component in a different system, it will only say component A is better in that specific system with that specific usage than component B.

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So, if you have the money, buy a PCI-E one. If you want to buy also some other stuff (eg: extra memory!) you might just as well stick with AGP, the game will not suffer from it at all (thus that is: when talking about the exact same card with exactly the same graphical CPU and features, but with a different bus type).