Hardware upgrade

Okies, I've put an X1950Pro AGP in my overclocked XP2400 (which is a waste of my CPU apparently) but hey
I've also put my Apple Mac Mini (CoreDuo 1.66) on the job.

Anyone else adding machines out there?

 

Well, I didn't expect THAT much of a difference!

Between those 2 upgrades I've trebled my output! The X1950 is as powerful at folding as all the rest of my PC's put together!
Oh, and it btought my 3DMark score up from 600 to 3800 points - who said AGP is dead!?
Best £135 I've spent on an upgrade ever!!

 

Actually it is. PCI X 16x has 16 lanes to exchange data and every 1x lane can exchange data in both directions! AGP is max 8x and each 1x lane can exchange data in 1 direction at a time. Thus, PCI X is much faster and more efficient. Here is an example- AGP 8x has a bandwidth of 2133mb/s and PCI X 8x has a bandwidth of 2000mb/s but the actual bandwidth is 4000mb/s. That is combined because of the serial data flow in both directions. Take into account that the typical standard on video cards is PCI X 16x and you get a combined bandwidth of 8000mb/s.

With that said, yes, you can still get some mean cards for AGP. I like my card, but I am working on building an SLI machine. Yes, AGP is soon to be forgotten and remember, SLI is PCI X only. Anyway, it won't matter because when you are ready to get your next board, you will be hard pressed to find AGP.

 

I honestly can't see me building another PC for myself as I'm not a gamer. I use the OC'd 2400 with the X1950 for browsing and watching films, the rest are just folding@home machines apart from the Mac which I'm fitting to my Honda GoldWing!
AGP is only 'dead' because the manufacturers are telling people so. The comparative tests of an X1950 AGP versus the PCI-I show there to be virtually no difference in speeds. The theoretical bandwidth is always quoted but the actual bandwidth being used by PCI-I doesn't warrant it.

 

I saw some tests too that support your point of almost indistinguishable differences in real-world performance. I was not onboard early with it either, but now I wonder if it is only a matter of the games catching up to use the additional bandwidth. Right now even, I don't think games maximize the bandwidth of either AGP or PCI X, but in theory it is better. Add to it that SLI is exclusive to PCI X and there you have it. No doubt though, that at the moment, they are telling us that we have to have it, but that is also part of my point too.

Oh yeah...and a few months ago I wouldn't have been touting PCI X (and I still use AGP), but I think that as games evolve, rather soon, we will see them take advantage of the additional bandwidth- especially with SLI setups (32x).

 

Interesting, but will this really affect folding speeds?

 

Nah, not much. This is pretty much exclusive a gaming advantage. However, you can gain an overall system performance boost by having a video card as opposed to using onboard because you would free up the resources (RAM) that onboard would be using. The additional bandwidth would be available to the system because, as you know, the vid card has its own RAM and dedicated processor.

I know what Nitrowing is saying. He doesn't need a huge gaming edge so for what he wants, his rig will more than suffice for a while. I was just pointing out, though, by his next build, he will have to go PCI X.

 

You know....I just now realized that this thread was the folding forum. I just happened to read Nitro's post and I responded to it.

 

In an indirect way, I would say 'Yes'. As the manufacturers develop graphics cards to take advantage of the available bandwidth then these cards will be able to fold faster. I can't believe the speed my X1950 is churning out WU's and it's 'last gen' as ATI will be making DX10 ready cards now which will be even faster!