new chip manufacturer

[Snake-Eyes]

Yup. They not only reduce much of the on-card requirements for memory bandwidth, but reduce the polys being sent over the bus to the card itself.

[R.Carter]

Dunno, its surprises some that a Matrox G400 MAX with only 32MB of RAM can actually actually perform a 64MB texture rendering test while the 32MB Nvidia cards cannot.

Seems that only some AGP cards actually support DME.

[MadScot]

or dime, rather

[Kruzin]

There has never been an nVidia or ATI card that supports DiME.
They, along with almost all others use DMA mode.
Matrox has been doing DiME since the G200.

[RichL]

Originally posted by R.Carter
Dunno, its surprises some that a Matrox G400 MAX with only 32MB of RAM can actually actually perform a 64MB texture rendering test while the 32MB Nvidia cards cannot.

Seems that only some AGP cards actually support DME.

Errr, mine cant. At least, it cant on 3DMark2000.

[Indiana]

IIRC that's because you're using Win2k. With Win98 it works.

[blacklotus]

Me too. IMO, AGP was a silly diversion all due to Intel's actions. We should have stick to PCI instead.

Originally posted by the maddman


AGP is very, very important now a days, but not for texturing. Take a PCI version of any newer video card and start comparing it with the AGP version. The AGP version is faster, not from texture uploads, but from geometry transfers. AGP8x is NEEDED if you want games with more polygons and more detail. It gets harder and harder to keep these render monsters fed polys. I just want a PCI-X version of the P-512 to go with a new AMD Hammer board.

[Wombat]

Why stick to PCI? It may very well be that AGP1x is all just about anybody needs, but the difference between even that AGP1x connection and a DMA transfer over PCI is significant.

[Kruzin]

Mine can, on 3dMark 2k or 2k1.

[RichL]

Originally posted by Indiana
IIRC that's because you're using Win2k. With Win98 it works.

I dont think it worked when I ran Win98 either, although I could be wrong.
Is there something you have to set somewhere? My AGP Apeture is set in BIOS to be 128mb, no Video BIOS caching or shadowing.. okay I'm out of ideas.

[Tempest]

So a-duh (sorry for being a little ignorant on this) but can we actually expect to see motherboards with only PCI-X slots in the future? I'm sure no one knows the exact answer to this, but do you think we'll see the move back to PCI only - or will it remain a feature of cheap and/or highly integrated MoBos? Do you think Parhelia ][ will use PCI-X or be AGP 16x compatible* when it comes out in 2005? Or will there be both models?

ps. DiME transfers worked beautifully with my MAX, haven't tested this G400-TV though...

[DGhost]

Originally posted by Tempest
So a-duh (sorry for being a little ignorant on this) but can we actually expect to see motherboards with only PCI-X slots in the future? I'm sure no one knows the exact answer to this, but do you think we'll see the move back to PCI only - or will it remain a feature of cheap and/or highly integrated MoBos? Do you think Parhelia ][ will use PCI-X or be AGP 16x compatible* when it comes out in 2005? Or will there be both models?

ps. DiME transfers worked beautifully with my MAX, haven't tested this G400-TV though...

personally i doubt that PCI-X will replace PCI 2.1/2.2 as the consumer standard for quite a while. the problem is that while it offers more bandwidth to the cards, it requires more complex motherboard designs to accomidate the extra data lines, a wider, faster connection to the processor and memory, and more board space for the slots. plus, none of the consumer cards use it.

granted, it is a lot faster, and these points really don't affect the server/workstation market (if i spent $400 on a motherboard right now it better have at least 64-bit pci) where cards acctually use it...

as far as PCI-X - uhh... forgive me but why bother replacing AGP 8x with PCI-X? AGP 8x allows up to 2gb/sec roughly, whereas PCI-X is only 1gb/sec atm. plus, AGP offers the ability to access system memory directly should the card need to do texture reads from it, etc....

[Wombat]

So a-duh (sorry for being a little ignorant on this) but can we actually expect to see motherboards with only PCI-X slots in the future? I'm sure no one knows the exact answer to this, but do you think we'll see the move back to PCI only - or will it remain a feature of cheap and/or highly integrated MoBos? Do you think Parhelia ][ will use PCI-X or be AGP 16x compatible* when it comes out in 2005? Or will there be both models?

PCI-X will likely only be found in workstation/servers.
What I <I>do</I> think will happen is that you see PCI-Express (aka 3GIO) boards hit in 2004ish. 3GIO offers system vendors a lot of flexibility they didn't have before, and can still emulate a PCI or AGP interface for devices that need it.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by RichL

I dont think it worked when I ran Win98 either, although I could be wrong.
Is there something you have to set somewhere? My AGP Apeture is set in BIOS to be 128mb, no Video BIOS caching or shadowing.. okay I'm out of ideas.

I seem to remember we had a thread about this earlier where this was the conclusion. Unfortunately search is disabled....

[MadScot]

Originally posted by Kruzin
There has never been an nVidia or ATI card that supports DiME.
They, along with almost all others use DMA mode.
Matrox has been doing DiME since the G200.

Heh heh, that was what I was suggesting.

What is PCI-Express? Ive heard of PCI-X, but not this.

MadScot