thought i had it all figured out...

S

samstown22

New Member
building computer. planned on using current vid card until i saved up for another. today friend told me about gf mx(?) and said they use two pci's instead of agp and runs faster. did some research, mostly dead ends. read the threads, found a little bit, but still have some ????
- its not one card, but two, and are connected by SLI. correct? if so, are they purchased together?
-it doesnt have to necessarily be an mx card. correct? as long as they are sli compatible...?
-is the mx any better than the 6800 series? or was my friend way off?
-is the sli faster than agp?
-how much are we talking for a decent card (or set if it proves to be worth it)? im currently running (on old pc, not my in-progress one) a gf 5600 128...new mobo is asus a8n deluxe sli w/ amd 64 3200 + 1g (2x512) ddr...

you guys are awesome...thanks in advance ;)
 
Yes, SLI is when 2 cards work together. They need to be identical cards, and only certain cards can use this feature.

SLI does not work with any MX cards that I know of.

MX cards are not better than any of the Nvidia 6 series.

"is the sli faster than agp?"
Well in SLI you use 2 PCI-Express cards, and yes it is faster than any single AGP card you can use.

"how much are we talking for a decent card"
How decent do you want it to be? If you got ~$200, go for an Nvidia 6600, or a 6800LE. With the 6800LE you can unlock extra pipelines, shaders, then OC it near a 6800GT if you want to.

Edit: Oh, and if you only have like about 180 you can actually get a 6600GT
Link: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-140-048&depa=1
Thanks to mgoldb2 for posting it in another thread.
 
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thx killa :D


oh...

you mention pci express...and i had been wondering, what is the difference between pci and express?
 
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You can transfer data much faster in PCI Express compared to PCI. But for now, PCI Express can only go as fast as AGP.
 
Tha Killa said:
You can transfer data much faster in PCI Express compared to PCI. But for now, PCI Express can only go as fast as AGP.
Click to expand...

I though PCI-E was 16x, whereas AGP was anywhere from 4x-8x?
 
o

o, i didn't know that. So as of right now there are no advantages of having PCI-E over AGP other than being able to go faster in the future?
 
Funzo6785 said:
o, i didn't know that. So as of right now there are no advantages of having PCI-E over AGP other than being able to go faster in the future?
Click to expand...

Yes the only advantage to pci-e is for future upgrades and the fact you can have 2 of them on a computer while you can only have one agp slot.
 
you mention pci express...and I had been wondering, what is the difference between pci and express?
Click to expand...
PCI is a generic system bus, capable of 133MBs (266MBs server). PCI express is a [more] serialized interface capable of something like 500MB/s per lane (multiple lanes run in parallel)

I though PCI-E was 16x, whereas AGP was anywhere from 4x-8x?
Click to expand...
Thats the maximum. PCIe by itself implies PCIx1 which is a 500MB/s interface :)

I though PCI-E was 16x, whereas AGP was anywhere from 4x-8x?
Click to expand...
Nope
 
forgive me if i missed this above, but the pcie is a mobo feature and not an upgrade per se? or rather a different format of pci cards...
 
forgive me if i missed this above, but the pcie is a mobo feature and not an upgrade per se? or rather a different format of pci cards...
Click to expand...
Basically PCI and PCIe are completely different. If you want a PCIe gfx card you'll need to buy a new mobo.
 
*kicks self in pants* mobo has 2 pcie X 16 and 2 pcie x 1? im assuming thats just plain old pcie with nothing special about it (as if pcie isnt special enough...)
 
samstown22 said:
*kicks self in pants* mobo has 2 pcie X 16 and 2 pcie x 1? im assuming thats just plain old pcie with nothing special about it (as if pcie isnt special enough...)
Click to expand...

uh, so thats your current motherboard? whatever happened to your regular PCI slots?
 
uh, so thats your current motherboard? whatever happened to your regular PCI slots?
Click to expand...
The A8N-SLI Deluxe has 2 PCIe X16, 2 PCIe x1, and 3 PCI slots if thats what you're asking.
 
when

when will the PCI-E slot start using all 16x of its speed. I'll take a wild guess and say when the 512 mb cards come out.
 
The full PCIe bandwidth won't be used until the vast majority of people are using it or something faster. This is why AGP8x isn't put to full use yet either.
 
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