[dpaanlka]

I have an AGP 2x Power Mac G4 with a Radeon 9800 Mac Edition in it, 128mb. I will be replacing it with a Digital Audio G4, which has a 4x AGP slot. I'll be putting the same card in there. Will I see much of an improvement.

Both machines will have a 1.8ghz Sonnet ugprade card.

[Tomchu]

You might see a small improvement, yeah, but only if you're playing games, and even then OS X is not exactly the fastest platform for gaming.

[©öñFü$íóÑ]

it really depends what kinds of games you'd be playing too.... AGP-anything doesn't quite cut it with games like Doom3 or Quake4... PCI Express is where it's at.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by ©öñFü$íóÑ

it really depends what kinds of games you'd be playing too.... AGP-anything doesn't quite cut it with games like Doom3 or Quake4... PCI Express is where it's at.

Wasn't Doom 3 released before PCI-E became at all mainstream?

[Lateralus]

And considering the bandwidth of AGP still isn't being tapped fully by modern GPUs, I doubt the performance 'issues' of Doom III have anything to do with AGP v PCIe.

[Tomchu]

Originally Posted by ©öñFü$íóÑ

it really depends what kinds of games you'd be playing too.... AGP-anything doesn't quite cut it with games like Doom3 or Quake4... PCI Express is where it's at.

There is virtually no performance difference between PCIe and AGP. Take it from a hardware reviewer. The only time PCIe will be making a difference is with some higher-end Vista stuff. Vista will work better with PCIe graphics due to it being equally fast in both directions, and Vista taking advantage of that somehow. AGP is more of a one-way bus.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

And considering the bandwidth of AGP still isn't being tapped fully by modern GPUs, I doubt the performance 'issues' of Doom III have anything to do with AGP v PCIe.

I agree.
Pick any card and any game on Tomshardware's VGA charts (PCIe AGP); the performance difference in tiny.
PCIe gives you some benefits (SLI, power), but performance generally isn't one.

[dpaanlka]

So will we eventually be seeing X800 cards for AGP 4x?

[Tomchu]

X800 cards already work on AGP 4x. They're AGP 4x/8x cards.

AGP is slowly decaying, but over half of the channel market is still on AGP, so expect to see some releases of AGP cards from ATI. Both NVIDIA and ATI have been ignoring AGP lately, but NVIDIA just recently (well, yesterday) launched the GeForce 7800 GS, which is an AGP part. ATI is going to be responding with something of their own.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by dpaanlka

So will we eventually be seeing X800 cards for AGP 4x?

It's possible. Only God knows when though...

Originally Posted by Tomchu

X800 cards already work on AGP 4x. They're AGP 4x/8x cards.

Not the Mac version.

[dpaanlka]

Why arent the Mac version 4x compatible? Would it be possible to re-flash a PC 4x AGP X800 to Mac? That would be a fun project.

[mduell]

dpaanlka: No, the lack of 4x support is a limitation in the Mac versions firmware (in addition to possible hardware limitations).

Originally Posted by Tomchu

AGP is slowly decaying, but over half of the channel market is still on AGP, so expect to see some releases of AGP cards from ATI. Both NVIDIA and ATI have been ignoring AGP lately, but NVIDIA just recently (well, yesterday) launched the GeForce 7800 GS, which is an AGP part. ATI is going to be responding with something of their own.

I'm not so sure that ATi will get into the market. As this thread on /. points out, for the price of a high-end AGP card you can buy an even better PCIe card and a motherboard with PCIe, which should make the sales of the high-end AGP cards pretty poor.

[Tomchu]

ATI is not going to allow NVIDIA free reign in the high-end AGP market while they sit on their laurels. It just doesn't work that way between these companies. :-P

While writing a part of yesterday's 7800 GS review for work, I discussed with my boss how the MSRP of the 7800 GS is higher than what you can get a 7800 GT for. You won't be able to get a board *and* a 7800 GT for the price of a 7800 GS, but it'll be close (+$50-$75). The thing is, the cards usually start popping up for much lower than MSRP after a few weeks, as was the case with the 7800 GT (which is a steal).

There's also one thing that you're forgetting ... not everyone who is on AGP is on Socket 939 AGP. There are *tons* of people still out there on Athlon XPs and Pentium 4s -- and knowing how many people probably spent a good amount on a high-end P4 only to have Intel announce that the next revision of the P4 would require a new motherboard, I'm willing to bet that a lot of such non-S939 AGP owners wouldn't mind breathing about another year of life into their AGP gaming rigs. Moving from such a system to PCIe would more costly.

[dpaanlka]

I dont see how any of the above two comments even remotely applies to Macs. There are hundreds of thousands of AGP G4s floating around.

[Tomchu]

We're discussing video cards in general, not just Mac video card solutions.

Lateralus: I believe the Mac X800 XT cards are available in 8x, so wouldn't that include 4x as well?

[Lateralus]

The X800 XT Mac Edition was designed specifically for the G5's proprietary AGP 8x Pro slot. The card is not backwards compatible. Hence it being marketed as 'G5 Edition'.

[Tomchu]

Oh, ok ... I didn't know it was AGP Pro. I haven't seen AGP Pro on too many PC motherboards, let alone Macs. :-/

[dpaanlka]

Isn't AGP 8X featured on every single Power Macintosh G5, except for the latest dual core ones?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by dpaanlka

Isn't AGP 8X featured on every single Power Macintosh G5, except for the latest dual core ones?

Yes.

[a2daj]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

The X800 XT Mac Edition was designed specifically for the G5's proprietary AGP 8x Pro slot. The card is not backwards compatible. Hence it being marketed as 'G5 Edition'.

The slot isn't proprietary unless you count the ADC nub. The main AGP Pro connector should be using an industry standard spec.

[Lateralus]

I'm counting the ADC nub.