Current G400 is not AGP 4X ?

[Rick]

Came across this
link

http://www.matrox.com/mga/feat_story/mar99/media/pdf/agp4x.pdf

Here's a piece from it.

The Matrox G400 also supports AGP texturing, pipelining, side band signaling, and AGP 4X reads/writes, making it the most complete AGP 4X solution.


Rick

[andrei]

Thanks Nuno.

When I'll switch to a P3 B or a Coppermine B, I'll switch the mobo to an 133 Mhz fsb one, BX arhitecture or i820 if I'll ever want to pay that much for rambus memory . Till then my 100 fsb Katmai, 450 Mhz will stay with the current mobo, and I'm thinking of giving him another 128 MBs of SDRAM to be happy.

[andrei]

Just picked this up from Adrenaline Vault's site

Friday, December 17, 1999 - 4:02 pm CT
AMD Leads the Race, For Now

EE Times is reporting that AMD has demonstrated two different versions of its Athlon microprocessor running at 900 MHz. One uses the company's standard 0.18-micron process with aluminum interconnects, while the second has the same line width but features copper interconnects.

The news comes just days after reports that rival Intel pushed up the release schedule for its 750 MHz and 800 MHz Pentium III chips. AMD's fastest chip available currently is the 750 MHz Athlon. The company plans to release an 800 MHz part next quarter and expects to crack the 1 GHz barrier in mid-2000.
_____________________________________________


Can you see a pattern here. Will AMD overthrow Intel, like Nvidia did with 3Dfx ?
or are Intel's pockets to deep ? Will we begin to see more high prices ?

[Nuno]

Andrei: no prob

Rick: The Matrox G400 chip supports AGP texturing, pipelining, side band signaling, and AGP 4X reads/writes. The available boards (Millennium/ Millennium MAX) because of a matter of pins in the connector (or something like that) do not. people can argue about it all they want, ok, it is cheap marketing. I also don´t like it... but everybody does that (TNT2 Ultra AGP 2x/4x, and so on) so Matrox also jumped the hype bandwagon. But again, as Haig stated, by the time the G400 was released there wasn´t a single platform to test agp4x, so they wisely choose to not implement agp4x tranfers whose compatibility would be suspicious at least and could cause all sort of problems.

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 18 December 1999).]

[paulcs]

There was a subtle change in marketing from the time the board was announced to the time the board was released.

At first, if memory serves me correctly, Matrox appeared to claim AGP 4x support.

When the board was released, Matrox claimed APG 4x "compatibility." Stick the board in AGP 4x slot and it will give you a display.

I noticed the priority AGP 4x (as a concept) was given in marketing literature, connoted through font size and positioning, was substantially reduced upon the release of the board. Just look at your box. (It's on the right side panel.)

God, I love computer marketing people. I'm sure they're the source of much angst in legal and tech support departments throughout the world.

We should all chip in and buy Haig a really big gun.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[paulcs]

By the way, this is very old news. Most of the regulars found out about this during the summer. However, it just seemed to elude most computer journalists, both in print and on the Web. Last week, I read a magazine review claiming the G400 fully supported AGP 4x. All of a sudden, its a big scoop.

Maybe Haig's gun would be better used elsewhere.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[SaltedPeanut]

Most of you are saying this is nothing new. Which is probably true. As for me I had no clue about it not supporting the AGP 4X features, because I do not hang out in forums and such. So how would I know about this? I just remember that the G400 being sold as a product with AGP 4X from the ground up.

As for as AGP 4X being useless. Well I remember when EMBM was barely supported by 2 titles upon release but was used as a marketing feature. I swear it was the same with AGP 4X. It might not be widely supported but it soon will be.

Anyhow what about people who bought the OEM card instead of the Retail. I'm sure they had no idea about this either.

I don't know why people are saying AGP 4X is only associated with i820 boards. VIA are producing 133mhz fsb with AGP 4X motherboards. Once the Mass's start shipping with AGP 4X I am sure this will be brought up.

[Nuno]

SaltedPeanut:1 (BTW, salted peanuts are my favourite snacks )

I may be wrong, but agp4x is something that will be outdated before it even began to be used. Want a simple reason? Either you want it or not, 3dfx cards are the most widely sold video cards (ok, forget S3 virge and ATI rage pro) and not even a single one of them supports agp texturing. Voodoo4 WON`T support agp texturing.

So imagine that you are a game developer: if you want to release a game that heavily depends on agp texturing it simply wouldn´t work on a voodoo card (do you imagine how much of the gaming market clients have voodoo2, banshees, voodoo3 and will buy voodoo4?). So there it is, your potential sales would be cut in half. To me that´s one of the main reasons why agp is close to useless, even nowadays. And it will be in the future, I don´t see anyone daring to support a game that wouldn´t work on a V4/V5/V6/v7 (you name it, now that 3dfx invented that external power supply, every new generation will double the vsa-100 number of chips on board )

[SaltedPeanut]

You bring up a good point, AGP texturing. But I want to know if that If I plug the G400 in an AGP 4X will I be able to use the fast bandwidth?

AGP 2X is 133mhz speed. Is AGP 4X 266mhz ? If it is, Will the G400 use the speed of the AGP 4X port? From what I recall on the box it says maximum 532mb/s which is AGP 2X. If that is the case, it seems the G400 won't use the speed of the AGP 4X Bus speed....

[SaltedPeanut]

Oh by the way. Asus is already selling their i820 motherboards..

I want to know if anyone has a GeForce256 and an i820, What is the speed of the AGP port ? ?

[alessandro]

By the way :

AGP 4x =1024Mb/sec approx.
SDRAM=825Mb/sec approx.

So no 4x in BX MOBOs .
Only 820i can get FULL AGP 4x with the RAMBUS

[Nuno]

Oh boy.
Salted, lets get things straight once and for all. AGP bus is 66 Mhz, no matter if it is 1x, 2x, 4x. AGP 1x transfers data in each clock cycle, AGP 2x transfers data in both falling and rising edges of the clock, doubling the data tranfer rate, AGP 4x is even a more neat trick, it tranfers data in the rising, falling and the tiny period of time that the clock is changing from rising to falling and from falling to rising. Got it? So in pratical terms, AGP 2x doubles maximum bandwidth and AGP 4x doubles it again from 2x. But the bus is always 66 mhz.

G400 will work in a AGP 4x motherboard but it will only do AGP 2x tranfers. And working in a 4x motherboard isn´t so simple as it seems. The slot is diferent (named agp pro), and the voltage protocol is different.

I just can´t understand that urge for insane agp bandwith when there is nothing that takes advantage of it and for the forementioned reasons, I doubt there will ever be. You can´t even tell the difference between 1x and 2x now, so why 4x? Just because?

alessandro, BX and agp 4x are not an issue. BX chipset doesn´t support agp4x so the isn´t and there won´t be a single BX mobo agp 4x. That example you gave aplies to i820 (with sdram). That´s one more reason to avoid that chipset like the plague.




[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 18 December 1999).]

[alessandro]

820i with SDRAM????????????
I dont think there is a 820i mobo with SDRAM?
Unless you mean 133Mhz SDRAM or even the SDRAM to Rambus slot adaptor from ASUS!
If i'm not wrong all of 820i mobos use RAMBUS but i might be wrong

[Nuno]

Yes you are wrong

Some i820 boards use sdram. This solution was provided by Intel (i820 cape cod, wasn´t it?) because they started to realize nobody would buy the outrageously overpriced rdram (5x more that PC100 sdram, yikes!). So they come out with the MTH chip (memory transtalor hub) that translates rdram calls to sdram calls. With a performance hit of about 10-20% when using sdram on a i440 BX board. Oh my. Mb manufacturers are generally ofering both versions - i820+MTH+sdram or i820+rdram.

PS: look at Asus, by instance : http://www.asus.com/Products/Motherboard/slot1.html
They have the P3C-E (rdram) and P3C2000 (sdram).

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 19 December 1999).]

[alessandro]

i thing i have already stated this in my previus post aboutr the ASUS adaptor?
(i now its userless my P2b is faster that this SDRAM 820i )