Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (
More info?)
"who be dat?" <whatever@dot.com> wrote in message
news:10bsvconb6su9c9@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Chip" <anneonymouse@virgin.net> wrote in message
> news:2i5uktFj754rU1@uni-berlin.de...
>
> > PCI-Express offers virtually zero benefits over AGP.
>
> On the whole, I agree with everything you said but this statement is just
so
> wrong. AGP can send data to cards fairly fast. However, AGP was designed
> to send data to the card and not necissarily send data from the card to
> memory. The result: seding data from the card is extemely slow.
>
> Normally this isn't such a big deal. However, Nvidia has stated their GPU
> is capable of several times more processing power than a P4. At times,
some
> of that processing power is sitting idle, even while playing games.
> Wouldn't it be neat if you could send data to the GPU, have it perform
> calculations for things other than graphics related items (such as Physics
> or AI) and send the results back to the memory/cpu? Currently, due to the
> slow rate of transfering data from a vid card to the system this is
> impossible. With PCI-Express, this will be a reality. If they can pull
it
> off, applications may have a dramatic performance boost. Heck, it maybe
> considered dual processing!
>
> Chris Smith
I agree about the bi-directional speed improvement. I ommited to mention it
because I don't share your opimism regarding the real-world benefit it will
bring. I can't ever see the scenario you describe actually happening.
That's just my personal opinion though and it might well be proved wrong.
However, in the gaming environment, PCI-Express remains largely - if not
completely - irrelevant.
The part that the buying public hasn't yet twigged is that graphics card
memory is running at 2.x nanaseconds these days. 510MHz DDR = 1100MHz reads
x 256 bit = 35GB/s. Main memory on the other hand is lucky to deliver
1/10th of that. Why would anyone want to load anything from main memory,
even if PCI-Express is lightning fast? Doesn't make any sense.
Chip
Chip