PCI Express / AGP

[fish99]

I seem to remember when PCI Express was being launched that ATI and nVidia took a different approach to it. Can't remember which way round it was, and that doesn't really matter, but I seem to remember one of them talking about continuing to make AGP cards initially and making some sort of bridge to make their AGP card work in a PCI Express slot, whereas the other company talked about doing the opposite - switching to making PCI Express cards and making a bridge to make them backwards compatible with AGP.

Was it just talk - did these solutions ever see the light of day? Is there any way to make an AGP card work on a PCI Express motherboard? Just it would be a lot less painful to upgrade in 2 steps - firstly CPU/motherboard/RAM, and then upgrade from my X800 XT at a later point, since it's still a quick card even today and doesn't need changing yet.

With CPU socket and video card slot both changing over together, I'm sure it's made upgrading very expensive for a lot of people.

Cheers in advance,
Simon.

 

[NightSt@lk3r]

the early X800's from ATI were AGP chips bridged to PCI-E i think and the 7800GS from nvidia is a PCI-E chip bridged to AGP there are others aswell

 

[Octavarium]

I seem to remember when PCI Express was being launched that ATI and nVidia took a different approach to it. Can't remember which way round it was, and that doesn't really matter, but I seem to remember one of them talking about continuing to make AGP cards initially and making some sort of bridge to make their AGP card work in a PCI Express slot, whereas the other company talked about doing the opposite - switching to making PCI Express cards and making a bridge to make them backwards compatible with AGP.

Was it just talk - did these solutions ever see the light of day? Is there any way to make an AGP card work on a PCI Express motherboard? Just it would be a lot less painful to upgrade in 2 steps - firstly CPU/motherboard/RAM, and then upgrade from my X800 XT at a later point, since it's still a quick card even today and doesn't need changing yet.

With CPU socket and video card slot both changing over together, I'm sure it's made upgrading very expensive for a lot of people.

Cheers in advance,
Simon.

I bought an ASRock Dual series, for this reason as it allowed me to stick with my old Vid card for a few months till I had enoughb money for my 7800GT

(it has both PCI-E and AGP on the board)

 

[kwong2005]

In fact, there still a few mB which have got both PCI-Express and AGP slot on the market, as i can remember, even one of the s478 P4 mB model have both slot too...

 

[ACESHIGH]

the early X800's from ATI were AGP chips bridged to PCI-E i think and the 7800GS from nvidia is a PCI-E chip bridged to AGP there are others aswell

I dont think thats correct.

AFAIK ...

ATI said they would make native AGP & PCIE cards, which they did. It was more expensive, but it was something they bragged about, having quicker native PCIE cards.

Nvidia said they would use a bridge chip, as they felt there would be no loss of speed. Cards like the PCIE 5900, were 5900XT AGP cards using the bridge chip. Their bridge chip was desinged to work in both directions & thus is used to make AGP cards from native PCIE chips (6600GT AGP was a good example, as you can see the heat spreader covering the bridge chip on most these cards).

ATI later on developed their own bridge chip, which was used to make AGP cards from native PCIE chips.