New Bridge Chip to Bring GeForce 8 Series to AGP

[JacKz5o]

NVIDIA is scheduled to launch an updated bridge chip that will allow their latest and upcoming GPUs to support AGP. Unlike their previous BR02 chip, their new A05 is compatible with the current GeForce 8600 (G86) and 8400 (G84) GPUs as well as the upcoming G92 and G98.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Solaris17]

hahahaah nice this is actually really good for the ppl who havent left agp ill always respect that interface but it also means that benchies will tell us how much of the bandwidth is being used because they still sell boards that support the latest and greatest cpu's only with an agp interface...and personally in my opinion we will finally prove all tyhose non bealivers wrong agp is outdated because manu. wanted to make more money by making something to upgrade 2 but if you look over the numbers agp is far from outdated.

 

[Ravenas]

My cousin loves AGP; I can't convince him to get a PCI-E card... I'll be sure to let him hear about this news.

 

[Deleted member 3]

but it also means that benchies will tell us how much of the bandwidth is being used because they still sell boards that support the latest and greatest cpu's only with an agp interface...

This can be done by taping off PCI-e lanes as well. It's been shown that high end cards do perform better with more lanes.

 

[Solaris17]

but isnt that because they are built for pci-e? i mean obviously if you tape off lanes to a pci-e card it will preform worse...but if the card is high end but designed for agp it shouldnt matter should it?

 

[pbmaster]

Ah, AGP. I don't think she will ever die.

 

[cmberry20]

One of the main reasons that PCI-E became the norm very quickly with motherboard manufactures & ATI/NVidia is because of SLI. Without this, the PCI-E bandwagon would have been slow moving & a lot more cards would have remained AGP. Many people may argue that PCI-E offers a faster bandwidth - well it does - but in real world performance there is no difference.

 

[Grings]

There is (a difference) now, but upon pci-e's release there wasnt

 

[jocksteeluk]

with all the problems with the old nvidia AGP bridge chip id personally be quite weary of investing new money into a new AGP card because soon the specs of the new games that will outstrip the maximum specs possible of any existing AGP based board making any graphics card update redundant as the cpu would not be able to keep up.

 

[jtleon]

AGP is not going away....apparently

I've been running AGP 3.0 with the BLISS card in my spec for over 1.5 years. Nothing has slowed down this card (based on 7900GTX, 24ppl), regardless of its AGP 3.0 status using the BR02 chip.

Clearly, Nvidia and AMD(ATI) recognize this fact, and the huge AGP marketplace, and are now admitting the same with this new bridge release.

SLI Users are still a tiny minority in the computing world.

And now, I have an upgrade path to the next gen. GPU's.....WooooHooooo!

 

[Kursah]

My question is what will the price premium of the bridge chip do to the current costs of an 8800, and will the PCB design that makes room for this bridge chip increase cost more?

Sure staying with AGP isn't a bad thing, and it's good to see NV still supporting AGP, an 8800 on AGP will be a brawler for sure, probably bottlenecked on a lot of systems, but it will bring a lot of performance to the table for many. But if the current price trend of AGP cards get's worse, that's kind of rough on AGP users looking to simply do a video upgrade to help their system keep up...

I hope the bridge chip is cheap to make and easy to integrate for those users still on AGP, and I wonder how well the performance of it will be, and if it can come close to matching PCI-e performance...

 

[Scrizz]

w00t AGP!!!

man.. I love my agp system...

 

[rhythmeister]

WOOT WOOT! Will I be able to squeeze one into a Soltek Qbic with the good old 2500 XP-M running @ 2.4GHz tho?

 

[Kursah]

If your x1950pro fits, the 8800 I believe is only a little bit longer than that...

 

[InfDamarvel]

Who cares, 8600GT is slower than the X1950pro.

 

[kakazza]

they still sell boards that support the latest and greatest cpu's only with an agp interface...

List 3 with P35/ICH9, kthx.

 

[jtleon]

Uhhh....Is the X1950pro faster than the G92 or G98???

Who cares, 8600GT is slower than the X1950pro.

Yes you must be correct....not many cards can compete with the X1950PRO.

Hmmm....I bet that includes the next gen G92 and the G98......Dammit....and I thought I had an upgrade path.....DOH!!!!

 

[Kursah]

Yes you must be correct....not many cards can compete with the X1950PRO.

Hmmm....I bet that includes the next gen G92 and the G98......Dammit....and I thought I had an upgrade path.....DOH!!!!

...that depends, the next series release mid range cards from both NV and AMD/ATI should both rival the x1950 properly as compared to this current gen series.

But if an 8800 is put on AGP it will utterly stomp an x1950 on a proper system, even on an older mid-range I bet the 8800 would easily edge out a 1950 even in a bottlenecked situation. I enjoy my 1950pro, and for now it's still the mid-range card to get and this is over 6 months after I purchased mine when it was the mid-range card to get at that time. ATI had a good mix of performance and price, now to see if either company can beat it with a good or close price point as compared to when the 1950pro was released is yet to be determined, but I'm going to keep a watch on the 2950pro as I'm hoping it will be a good enough card to replace my 1950pro.

Don't jump to conclusions just yet about G92/98 stuff just yet, wait till we see what it's capable of with actual results, then you can justify whether or not it deserves to fill that slot in your PC.

 

[kwchang007]

More latency because of an agp bridge..

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

AGP neverdie!

 

[Kursah]

More latency because of an agp bridge..

That really didn't affect the performance of older cards like the 7800GS, and the x1950pro as compared to their PCI-e coutnerparts as much as total system build/OC did with bottlenecking if I recall correctly though.

I'm sure there will be a small performance decrease from this, but if NV has a second gen bridge chip, I'm sure it'll be more efficient, run cooler, etc, or that's what we'd hope for a new revision, but maybe it just supports the 8xxx series and that's the only change...

Either way, hope for AGP, yes, but at what price?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

That really didn't affect the performance of older cards like the 7800GS, and the x1950pro as compared to their PCI-e coutnerparts as much as total system build/OC did with bottlenecking if I recall correctly though.

I'm sure there will be a small performance decrease from this, but if NV has a second gen bridge chip, I'm sure it'll be more efficient, run cooler, etc, or that's what we'd hope for a new revision, but maybe it just supports the 8xxx series and that's the only change...

Either way, hope for AGP, yes, but at what price?

those words exactly...

before I decided to move to PCI-E I decided to give my agp system 1 ast push & grab a Gainward BLISS 7900GS+ Silent Edition(AGP) .... & the Price I was rediculous. In the time where the ATi X1900XTX was like the BEST card money could buy. The price I was given for the 7900GS+ was roughly 20-30 Pound Sterling over the X1900XTx

How extortionate is that??? it seems that most shops that have AGP cards available sell for a rip off price because they know AGP cards are pretty hard to come by now days.

so my advice is - if u want so save some cash then upgrade to PCI-E because your not doing yourself any favours in keeping wth AGP.

- It performs Slower
- AGP cards are hard to come by & shops WILL rip you off because its an AGP in the big world of PCI-E

So you will very ulikely get value for money unless you're able to get an AGP 2nd hand off ebay or some similar place.

"Been there, Done that & Refused to walk away with a T-shirt..."


EDIT:

A PCI-E 8800GTS is roughly around half the price of a 8800GTX depending on which party you decide to buy. but 200Pounds Steriling is a great price for a card like that - AGP'ers expect to pay MORE for LESS performance.

 

[paul06660]

I will hold on to AGP for as long as necessary.
pciE 2 will be out soon so good thing I have held onto my system. No need to waste more cash than necessary.
I recently went to 2 gigs of ddr400 and was able to get my X850XT AGP to play ALL my games on maxed out detail at 1280x1024, the previous resolution was 1024x768. The only game that isn't maxed out is Quake 4. It plays 1280x1024 on high detail with all options checked with 4xAA. The textures have a metallic style finish that is unreal. And Prey looks totally awesome as well (better than a xbox 360?).
I bought my outdated AGP video card last year. (the Sapphire X850XT AGP for $140 on Newegg). I had a geforce 5200 for 2 years. I just got a new 19 in widescreen for $200.

The video card, the extra gig of ddr400, the monitor and a fresh power supply was like building a whole new computer.
I just think that pciE was just a bunch of bull. They just want us to think our stuff is out dated so that we buy the new stuff.
The only main advantage for pciE is for a more powerful cpu, and the extra bandwidth for communication with high end video cards like a x1950 or 8800 or SLI/Crossfire setups.

Now they still make motherboards that will match a modern cpu with an AGP 8x card, but that is only worth wile of you have an expensive AGP card you bought for an older system (like mine) and you dont want to get rid of yet.

 

[Weer]

It's still best to get an X1950XT for AGP.

 

[JC316]

Yeah and the bad part is that the PCI-E 8600 will be $150 and the AGP will be $250, if they follow the trend of the other high end AGP cards anyway.