AGP 8X... is it needed?

[nehalmistry]

does it really make a difference if matrox's next big release(G800) is agp 8x transfer rate compatible... i mean isn't agp 1x transfer rate 266mb/sec... isnt that more than enough... and if not.. im sure 2x might help .... but certainly not 4x or 8x..

i think that the only reason they are making it 8x is to convince the public how great they are... and how ahead of the game they are... although i don't really think it will affect the product... other than the price...

does anyone else agree? please correct me if im wrong anywhere!

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P5A-B AMD K6-266@300
Matrox Milleniumm G200 AGP (oh, lets party)
Creative SB Awe32 (a classic, superb card)
Realtek 8029A NIC Card
64meg Ram
Ali V agp chipset
ICQ UIN: 24730025

[Joel]

Who says that their next product will be 8x AGP? I haven't seen Matrox say anything yet.

Joel

[nehalmistry]

well maybe not the g800... but probably the next big release after that....
this is what was stated on MURC home page

Matrox have signed up to contribute to Intel's next generation AGP bus specification, AGP 8X.

anyway... my point is, agp 8x is kinda useless.... matrox is looking way too far ahead.

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P5A-B AMD K6-266@300
Matrox Milleniumm G200 AGP (oh, lets party)
Creative SB Awe32 (a classic, superb card)
Realtek 8029A NIC Card
64meg Ram
Ali V agp chipset
ICQ UIN: 24730025

[This message has been edited by nehalmistry (edited 03 September 2000).]

[paulcs]

Actually, Intel is responsible for the development of the AGP 8X spec. Matrox (and others) are just lending a hand.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Guardian]

AGP X8 cant harm can it? as long as its backwards compat to 4X....

[nehalmistry]

no... it can't harm it... but what im saying is... it isn't needed at all...

its like a house made out of pure gold... it may appear great but really doesn't do anything for the house itself....

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P5A-B AMD K6-266@300
Matrox Milleniumm G200 AGP (oh, lets party)
Creative SB Awe32 (a classic, superb card)
Realtek 8029A NIC Card
64meg Ram
Ali V agp chipset
ICQ UIN: 24730025

[Nuno]

One year from now we will get one hundred posts from people unable to run their 128 Mb FCRAM Gx00 at AGP8x, only being able to use AGP 4X, even if no game at the time makes use of 128 Mb video memory.

I think I´ll bookmark this thread just to link it then

[paulcs]

I was thinking the *exact* same thing, Nuno. We're going to be driven crazy by people who can't get AGP 8X to "work."

I think we should make a pact. I think we should agree not to answer any questions or complaints (and you know half of them will be rants) about AGP 8X.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Taz]

It may not make a lot of sense from a technical point of view but it makes great sense from a marketing point of view. The average consumer doesn't know the difference between bandwidth and throughput so they assume that 8x's is twice as quick as 4x's. They also want the lastest technology so if 8x's is the new standard they aren't going to want something which is 4x's because that's out of date. At the end of the day Matrox like all companies are there to make money, which they do by selling as many cards as they can. If this helps them achieve that goal then they are happy.

[nehalmistry]

taz: that's *EXACTLY* what i was saying(1st post)... and yes.. people will buy into the concept "8x is better than 4x" when really there is no difference

i agree, not far from present time, these forums will be full of people complaining about why they can't get matrox card (whatever it will be) to work in 8x mode

btw, does anyone have any clue about what framerate's are needed in an average game before agp 8x reaches its limits.... wouldn't that be more than any monitor can handle..??
------------------
P5A-B AMD K6-266@300
Matrox Milleniumm G200 AGP (oh, lets party)
Creative SB Awe32 (a classic, superb card)
Realtek 8029A NIC Card
64meg Ram
Ali V agp chipset
ICQ UIN: 24730025

[This message has been edited by nehalmistry (edited 04 September 2000).]

[Humus]

You are all overlooking an important thing. Todays cards doesn't benefit much from higher AGP speeds in current games, but a high bus will be coming a more important issue as games start to use T&L. With T&L you have to push all geometric and light data including matrixes and stuff over the AGP bus, not just the results after the transforming and lighning.
You can see this clearly even with todays games if you take a GF/GTS card with 32MB and push the resolution to 1600x1200x32 with high textures etc. It'll be slower with T&L enabled since it starts to saturate the AGP bus!

[HedsSpaz]

nehalmistry, I don't think frame rate will max out an 8x agp bus so much as the size of textures being used, and the resolution at which you are playing a game.

If you're playing a game at 640x480 with 256x256 textures, it just doesn't take a whole lot of memory to store the information in the first place, let alone bring up concerns of accessing it quickly. If on the other hand we someday have a card that can actually handle 1600x1200x32(64 even?) with 2048x2048 or even 4096x4096 textures, then you have to start to worry about storing that data, and transfering it fast enough when it can't be stored localy.

I take the stance that they were going to move inevetably to AGP8x eventually anyway, so we might as well do it now, well before we actually have any conceivable use for it. It is definately a simple marketing gimmick at the moment, but thats what a lot of this industry is built on, and I doubt it suprised anyone in the least when they made that announcement.

Ian

[Raptor^]

At my old job, I regularly used 1024X1024 and 2048x2048 textures. AGP 4X isn't really fast enough, so any improvements to the spec would be welcome

Of course for the vast majority of users its unlikely to make much difference (my G400 is stuck in AGP 1x and I barely notice any change for gaming)

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P3-700E, Abit BF6, G400 MAX, 8.6 gig Seagate, 8.6 gig WD, SBLive 1024, 256Mb PC100... Mouse, Keyb, Stuff

[DuRaNgO]

Any time something can be made *better* it should be as this is one more door made *bigger*

It's like creating speakers that can handle 1,000 watts of power, shortly someone will create a receiver that puts out, well the obvious
jim

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P3-700e @ 1052! Check it here!
Abit BE6-2
TwinMos 128mb pc-133
Matrox Fusion Plus F800 AGP with 64mb fcram
Maxtor 15.3gb 7,200rpm
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
and 384k DSL!

[Rags]

One thing I fail to see mentioned in this thread is the lack of motherboards that fully support 4X transfers. If you have an i820,i840 with RDRAM, then you do, but the via solution, the i815 solution both do NOT take advantage of AGP 4X to it's potential. And we are sitting here discussing whether 8X is practical? Personally, I think there are better solutions than AGP transfers. Tiling is one solution, texture compression, and there are other types of texturing coming down the road that will reduce texture loads, also memory is cheap, so simply adding more memory to the graphics card is always a nice solution (hey, it works for nvidia!).

Rags