Hey...
OK...
So I'm looking at upgrading to an AMD64 3000+ after Xmas.
The Mobo will have an AGP 8x port, but no PCI Express ports.
And then 512 Ram, new case, and I'll cannibalize for Drives, Cards, and Cords.

So here's my problem.

Are all the new Vid Cards coming out going to be made for PCI Express? Because although I only upgrade the core guts of my computer every 2-3 years, I upgrade my Vid Card every year or 2.

And if my new Mobo isn't going to support any new Vid Cards, I'm going to be pretty screwed.

Will PCI Express cards work on PCI ports? Will they work like asscrap? Am I going to have to just leave my AGP port empty?

:-o

All the best ones, definitely.

Getting a AMD64 3400+ myself, need to find somewhere that has 1mb cache ones though. The 3000+ didn't do too great in benchmarks, but the 3400+ came out top trumps after the FX.

Intel still dominate for none gaming.

I'll be needing some advice too, since my plan is to upgrade after xmas

i still got this 1,6ghz amd with gf3.....

i want a new motherboard and cpu soon to, but this pci express keep me hanging, i havent seen any good pci gfx card out yet. so i wonder when will the gfx companies start pushing them out...

i see no point in geting a 64bit amd with 8x agp, when pci express is the next step....

That's my general view on it all. I hear they've managed to squeesh more out of the next line of CPUs available early next year, so the leap up a spec will be bigger.

The pressing concern regarding CPU is that Microsoft still doesn't have a non-beta product for it.

Gentoo is the (only?) OS that supports 64bit right now, and ATI are supposed to have terrible linux support, utterly shocking. So that puts nvidia in a prominent position atm.

Have you all still not learned that it is stupid to wait for better hardware? Buy what you need/want now. There will always be a 'soon a better system will be available'.

not in this case, PCI-E and 64bit, since they really are different, technology.

The cpu faster thing, I was just pointing out the latest techno news, I'm not waiting for them.

A decent PCI-E and I'm game

64bit is not really a differnet technology, PCI-E is though. If you wait too long to purchase, you will probably start hearing about AMD plans to support DDR3. They will probably skip DDR2 since it does not offer any real improvements over DDR. The same thing happened with all graffics card manus, they came out with very few DDR2 cards before going to DDR3.

disagree, it is significant enough to be a 'different technology'. Its the quantifier that defines a hardware generation, so even if it is the same layout, but with 64bit pipes, its still 2x that of previous generations

So if ya'll were me, you'd wait till a decent AMD-compatible PCI-E mobo came out before I upgrade?

Cuz I haven't found any.

I totally agree, but the new stuff just around the corner right now is worth waiting for/need to wait for. Got the funds set aside, just waiting for the right time to spend it, which will probably be sometime in January.

here is some info about pci express...

http://www.pcisig.com/

I'm quoting myself to get an answer here. Come on people.

Maybe they'll make a Motherboard with an AGP port AND a PCI Express port.

But I don't know. I don't want to get screwed by buying a Motherboard without PCI Express if all the new Vid Cards are gonna be built for PCI Express.

Isn't PCI Express supposed to be backwards compatible? Couldn't I just plug a PCI Express card right into a normal PCI port?

just check out the link i posted and you get answer to all your questions...

OK.
Did it.
Yeah, so PCI-X is gonna be backward compatible.

So I think I'll just upgrade and stick future PCI-Express Video Cards into normal PCI ports and worry about actually getting a PCI-Express motherboard when they are no longer bleeding edge.

Cuz you gotta use your <img src="http://beallcenter.uci.edu/shift/images/noodle.jpg">

Your going to stick a card that's >10x faster than agp in a port thats about 10x slower than agp?

That will not work. Noy only will your pc will not be able to do anything, its not going to even fit in the port

On the otherhand, normal PCI cards can fit in PCI-Express and work. AGP isn't PCI though, it was a stopgap to break the bottleneck in PCI speed.

So I should wait for a PCI-E motherboard to come out?

Do you think ALL the slots on the motherboards will be PCI-X, or do you think we'll have normal PCI ports as well as PCI-X slots?

Or am I going to have to make all my hardware PCI-X?

PCI-E and PCI-X are different technologies first of all. PCI-X has been around for a long time, is better than PCI but too expensive and only slightly better. People nowadays are talking about PCI-Express (PCI-E), which is significantly faster.

I'm not completely read up on the matter, so I may be misinformed, but this comes in too flavours, one larger port and then one with a smaller port. The larger port one has 128bit data channel and the other has 64bit.

You could in theory have 6 of the larger ports, and put 6 PCI-Express graphics cards in, or 5Gigabit ethernet cards and a graphics card, or whatever. There's also a smaller one, which is likely.

From what I've read, its likely that motherboards will have one or two of these larger PCI-Express cards and then some smaller ones. Likewise there's the posibility of all the larger ones or all the smallers ones.

I think its the smaller ones that are the same size as the current PCI cards, so its likely there'll be a mix of them.

If you put your current PCI card in to the slot, its not going to run faster, it will however perform fine without any bottlenecks. Now this doesn't matter for 56k modems or anything like, the only thing that really pushes PCI is HDD controllers and graphics cards, which is why both don't use plain PCI (okay you can get flavours for them, but they're slower).

Its also possible but unlikely due to expense, that you'll get a mix of PCI-Express and AGP.

I don't have time to read this but if you want to learn about the differences, the importance and why people will laugh at you if you don't get it:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ ... pcie.ars/1


Quick answers:
So the answer to the first one is hell yes, the answer to your second one, PCI-X isn't PCI-E, but PCI-E is backwards compatible. You can put PCI cards in them.... however early boards may cheap out and they be standard PCI ports, its up to the manufactors. and finall nope.

Please check up on that, I'm a bit busy atm to research this (busy being an admin, you know... clicking stuff, the usual ), but I'm sure I read all this somewhere.

I disagree with your disagreement. Since it was made to be completely backward compatible all the way to the original Intel 8086?, it is not different. It will take a completely new architecture to make it different. Something that Intel tried to force on us and failed at.

You are correct as of right now, but there will be definite performance differences between a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit chip, and a 64-bit OS on a 32-bit chip. And M$'s next OS is going to be 64.

Not to mention I bet you a billion dollars that they aren't going to make any Motherboards with PCI-E that are for 32 bit chips.

Upgrade Conclusion as of Right Now:

A). Waiting till February at the earliest

B). AMD64 3400+ chip, Motherboard with a PCI-Express 16X slot. 512 (or maybe 1024) of RAM, new Case.

C). To go into the PCI-E slot, I'm going to buy an ATI Radeon X700 Pro.

No SATA. Not yet.
The motherboard I buy will undoubtedly have SATA capacity, though, so I can just upgrade the HD's when I need too. This will allow me to also upgrade my Vid card as I need to, because I'll have the PCI-E mainboard.