Intel 915/925 No AGP

[forcemac101]

Anand has a little 1 pager editorial on an observation of theirs.

I haven't heard much in the way of products for PCI-Express from ATI or NVIDIA....other than the prototypes that run using an agp-pci-express bridge....any news on the high end 3d cards?

Linkage

 

[VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVI]

This has been assumed for some time now. The chipset roadmaps clearly show a move from AGP to PCI-E as seperate technologies. The SiS, Via, and nvidia roadmaps show the same thing. Supporting two redundant graphics technologies that require a dedicated connection to the NB seems unlikely.

However, it may be possible to include an AGP to PCI-E bridge chip directly on the motherboard.

ATi has a couple of native PCI-E chips on the burner. nvidia is going to be using an AGP bridge at first.

 

[ZenOps]

It was sort of assumed that this would happen.. I just wasn't expecting it so early.

For something as important and high-bandwidth as video, there shouldn't really be two interfaces. The bridge chip could be put on the motherboard, but why support backwards? Leaving the bridge on the videocard is probably a better idea (or doing the ATi thing and just making the card for either type)

I wonder if any of Nvidias NV40 line will be natively PCI-express ready, or will all of them need the bridge chip? That little bridge chip is going to get plenty hammered... Probably not with 3D data, but the first person who tries to play a HDTV WMA video (which can saturate a 8x AGP connection) might find out quickly if the bridge chip is all that it is cracked up to be. I will state right now I have my doubts as to how well/if a seperate bridge chip can survive that type of bandwidth bombardment.

I'm no fan of AGP, a PCI variant was always on my mind as superior tech (just like the faster blue slots for ATA-133, a high speed PCI for video slot could have been used instead of the proprietary AGP slot way back when.) I can see the need for PCI-express being slightly different than PCI, as it it now serial based data (and not parallel)

End of really long analysis

 

[rayman2k2]

i think it is a smart move, technically, it's forcing new technology onto us, that way we adopt more quickly. remember, ATi said that the 9700pro was easily modable to PCI-E, so I'm pretty sure all the new cards from both companies will be too...