will there be only one PCI-E slot, or several? In other words, can we run multiple PCI-E graphics cards in the same machine?
This is the on-going saga of me getting a super-duper graphics machine #1
What I want is the basic power and feature set of nvidia (which I love), with the (extra) features offered by ATI’s All In Wonder cards.
Since nvidia don’t seem to be prepared to offer any of the TV features that ATI do, a dual card system would be ideal.
I’ve only just gone over to AMD, after bad experiences in the past. I’m happy now that they seem (in many ways) to have overtaken Intel. I have the same predjuces about ATI - I used to build machines, but had a never ending string of problems with ATI. And they still don’t seem too keen on OpenGL - at least not in the way that nvidia are.
#1 Remember my previous post about 19" monitors - I’ve blown that into the weeds. A good 22" seems to be the only way forward, seeing as I need 1600x1200 at a good refresh rate (100MHz)
Thanks for any input - I’m in no desparate rush … just curious, for now.
And they still don’t seem too keen on OpenGL - at least not in the way that nvidia are.
To their credit, ATi is the only major video card vendor to have a functioning glslang implementation. Considering that this is no simple task, they seem to be supporting OpenGL quite well.
I’ve got my from Saphire. It’s on the level of GeForce Ti 4200 . None of Ati cards don’t get the speed of good old GeForce (not to mention Radeon 9600XT). Try the real framerates. If you get a good ventilation, you can turn via bios tweak the 9800SE to 9800 (from 4 to 8 pipelines). But It did not work to me. It started to snow
Here’s what I’ve gleaned from Intel whitepapers and the web in general:
PCI-Express comes in a variety of speeds, measured in “x” sort of like AGP is. Except with PCI-Express, I believe it’s supposed to degrade correctly if you plug a 1x card into a 16x slot (I don’t think it necessarily does the reverse, though).
The “x” really measures the width of a bus. Each data carrier with “1x” bandwidth has as much bandwidth as AGP 1x (IIRC), which is twice that of regular PCI.
I believe it’s expected that chip sets will come with a number of 1x slots (to replace PCI slots for general peripherals) and, typically, one high-performance slot (8x or 16x) to replace the AGP slot. However, unlike with AGP, it’s physically reasonable to build multiple high-speed slots into a chip set – whether and when it’ll actually happen, you’d have to look at specific chip set vendor roadmaps.
Oh, and if you could upgrade your machine now, and are holding out for an early PCI-Express machine, I wouldn’t. For a few reasons:
current hardware is price competetive and stable; we’re at iteration 2 or 3 of pretty much all chip sets, memory and CPU busses, and graphics families.
PCI-Express isn’t likely to be generally available real soon.
The first implementations will probably have some, uh, “unexpected interactions.” Call me a pessimist, or just learning from history
If I’m off by an order of magnitude somewhere, I’m sure someone will correct me.
Other:
ATI’s relation with Nintendo. ATI gets royalties from gamecube games.
ATI’s relation with MS for XBox2.
ATI used “Low K” to reduce power consumption.
The new cards that are appearing like the 9600XT 9800XT have this low k thing.
The k is the dielectric constant and the idea is to lower it.
It is becoming a problem at the current level (130 nm and lower).
Someone should have asked what other tech they are applying in their GPUs.
Won, thanks for the info. I was only using “X” as an abbreviation and did not know there was a PCI-X. I’m sure I read recently that the first mb’s were expected to hit the shelfs Jan 2004.
