PCI Express.. is it worth the wait.

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Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

I was pondering some facts today. I believe a Geforce FX 6800 or a ATI X800
is it??. Is capable of running doom3 at, at least 1024x768 resolution in
ultra high detail, with a constant 60FPS( 60fps being the maximum the game
will allow and way above any noticable lag ). Or at least this is what some
posters have claimed.

So my thought is, why wait an unknown amount of time for new technology that
will cost more, and yet still do the same as an 8 X APG card will do for
current state of the art games such as doom3. Without having looked in to
the technical details, it would appear that the 8 XAGP is as yet is still
not a serious enough bottle neck in a PC to make the wait for PCI express
worth wile.

Just my thoughts for today. any comments would be welcome.

Andy.
 
Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

Angellus wrote:
> I was pondering some facts today. I believe a Geforce FX 6800 or a ATI X800
> is it??. Is capable of running doom3 at, at least 1024x768 resolution in
> ultra high detail, with a constant 60FPS( 60fps being the maximum the game
> will allow and way above any noticable lag ). Or at least this is what some
> posters have claimed.
>
> So my thought is, why wait an unknown amount of time for new technology that
> will cost more, and yet still do the same as an 8 X APG card will do for
> current state of the art games such as doom3. Without having looked in to
> the technical details, it would appear that the 8 XAGP is as yet is still
> not a serious enough bottle neck in a PC to make the wait for PCI express
> worth wile.
>
> Just my thoughts for today. any comments would be welcome.
>
> Andy.
>
>

Here's a big problem we have today -- overall system throughput. We
have VERY fast CPU's, GPU's with IMMENSE bandwidth internally, but the
bus and chipset connecting them is antiquated at best.

Even though we have a AGP bus, it still only goes fast "one way" at a
time and we have the problem of a legacy PCI chipset that does the
communications between all board components. You need and an equally
fast and wide communications bus between all the components; CPU, GPU,
RAM, BUS, they all have to be working on the same page or one component
will be waiting on the other.

PCIX is a good step towards unifying all the components in the system.

Previously we had a bad implementation of "Fast Writes" in order for the
GPU to communicate directly with the CPU, but that never worked well and
only a few early Intel P4 boards supported it in any meaningful way.
Even though all mobo's seem to have the option, it just doesn't work as
it's supposed to.

NVidia also made great strides developing the NForce and NForce 2
chipset to optimize overall system bandwidth greatly. The NForce 2 in
particular is an extremely stable and fast chipset. The bridge chip
supports very fast memory timings.

PCIX is more of an evolution than anything else. It's necessary because
our current design just isn't keeping up. Eventually with fully native
PCIX boards and optimized chipsets, we will see a much greater advantage
of the new bus and be able to actually use some of that raw bandwidth in
our GPU's.

We see the convergence of CPU's and GPU's all the time and the line of
distinction is growing thinner. GPU's are becoming massively parallel,
general purpose, programmable processors; CPU's are taking on
increasingly more varied instruction sets; and finally memory types
(such as G/DDR2/3) are fast enough to be used in both system and
graphics memory.
 
Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

"Angellus" <andy_email2002"NOSPAM"@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message news:LVQ5d.5993$5O5.3829@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>I was pondering some facts today. I believe a Geforce FX 6800 or a ATI X800
> is it??. Is capable of running doom3 at, at least 1024x768 resolution in
> ultra high detail, with a constant 60FPS( 60fps being the maximum the game
> will allow and way above any noticable lag ). Or at least this is what some
> posters have claimed.
>
> So my thought is, why wait an unknown amount of time for new technology that
> will cost more, and yet still do the same as an 8 X APG card will do for
> current state of the art games such as doom3. Without having looked in to
> the technical details, it would appear that the 8 XAGP is as yet is still
> not a serious enough bottle neck in a PC to make the wait for PCI express
> worth wile.
>
> Just my thoughts for today. any comments would be welcome.

The final arbiter of whether it's worth the wait or not, is whether
*you* feel like waiting. If you want to play Doom3 with excellent
framerates and quality *now*, then don't wait. If you are satisfied
with how Doom3 plays for you right now, on your current rig, then
by all means, wait till next spring/summer when PCI-Express parts
have had a chance to mature, become cheaper, and when the next
round of made-for-PCI-Express video cards comes out. Right now,
PCI-Express mobo-vidcard setups are not producing any significantly
better performance in Doom3 or other games than AGP setups are,
largely because it's still a brand-new technology that no OS or soft-
ware has been optimized for, yet. Give it some time, and it will
indeed kick large quantities of butt.

Also, I've heard people saying "I'll just buy a PCI-Express videocard
now, and plop in a second PCI-Express card of the same type later,
to run them in 'SLI' (not technically accurate acronym, but gives the
idea)." Well, from what I've heard, the video card companies that are
working on dual-vidcard setups plan on using a 'crossover' piece of
hardware to connect the tops of the two cards, which will require an
as-yet-unavailable crossover connection plugin on the card you are
buying now. So will the PCI-Express vidcard you buy now work with
a second card for dual-vidcard graphics processing on down the road?
Probably not.
-Marshall
 
Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

Hi,


Pretty much buy now. I was in the same situation last week. I did the
research and presently big outlay for no gain at the moment going the PCI
express route.

In my last post I gave bench marks of my rig ie:

ATI X800XT PE P4 3.2Ghz 1Gig RAM

At 1024X768 4XFSAA 8XAF high quality settings getting 60FPS in demo1.

Game is amazing. What ever you have heard the ultra settings do not make a
significant visual difference when playing.

Fastest card out there for doom 3 is NV6800ultra extreme (3FPS faster at
same settings). I have bench marked both on my rig and have to say the
anandtech article is not as accurate is the readings I got. Pretty much the
same as Tom's Hardware results. Not getting into any arguments here just my
observations from my own bench marks.

Any way I went with the ATI X800XT PE very pleased with it.

cheers physman.


"Angellus" <andy_email2002"NOSPAM"@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:LVQ5d.5993$5O5.3829@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>I was pondering some facts today. I believe a Geforce FX 6800 or a ATI X800
> is it??. Is capable of running doom3 at, at least 1024x768 resolution in
> ultra high detail, with a constant 60FPS( 60fps being the maximum the game
> will allow and way above any noticable lag ). Or at least this is what
> some
> posters have claimed.
>
> So my thought is, why wait an unknown amount of time for new technology
> that
> will cost more, and yet still do the same as an 8 X APG card will do for
> current state of the art games such as doom3. Without having looked in to
> the technical details, it would appear that the 8 XAGP is as yet is still
> not a serious enough bottle neck in a PC to make the wait for PCI express
> worth wile.
>
> Just my thoughts for today. any comments would be welcome.
>
> Andy.
>
>
 
Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

> I was pondering some facts today.

Did you hurt yourself?

--
-Scott

"Spreading a little of my sunshine throughout Usenet hell."
 
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