PCI-Express future as seen by ATI

[W1zzard]

According to this report at DigiTimes, ATI claims that PCI-Express will grow to take 50% of desktop motherboards in the middle of the year and 90% around the end of the year.

I'm a bit sceptical about this. PCI-Express gives you almost no advantage over AGP, except for dual-card solutions like NVIDIA's SLI.
On the other hand, if manufacturers for office computers jump on the PCI-E bandwagon we might see some huge PCI-E growths.

Also in this article ATI says that caused by Intel's new Sonoma notebook chipset, they expect PCI-Express support to rise to 60-70% in the notebook segment during this year.

[wazzledoozle]

Over-optimistic. What is the point of a PCI express chipset in a notebook?

[jbltk]

I wouldn't say PCI-E itself has no advantages over AGP. The technology is better and allows for more bandwidth, which is always great for graphics cards.

The problem lies in the fact that DDR2 has no advantages over DDR at 400 Mhz, and the latency is much, much higher at any speed after that. Once DDR2 technology catches up and starts offering lower latency, I'll be the first in line to upgrade.

In the meantime, this board from Gigabyte is probably a good bet for those that want an 800XT but don't want to use DDR2:

GIGABYTE "GA-8I915P Duo-A" 915P Chipset Motherboard for Intel LGA775 CPU

Key features:

Supported CPU: LGA775 Pentium 4(HT) Processors
Chipset: Grantsdale P(915P) + ICH6
FSB: 800/533MHz
RAM: 2x Dual Channel DDRII 533/400, 2x Dual Channel DDR400/333 Max 4GB
IDE: 1x ATA 100/66(ICH6), 2x ATA133(VT6410)
Slots: 1x PCI-E x16, 1x G.E.A.R., 2x PCI, 2x PCI-E x1
Ports: 2x PS/2, 1x COM, 1x LPT, 1x LAN, 8x USB2.0(Rear 4), Audio Ports, S/PDIF(In/Out)
Onboard Audio: Azalia(C-Media 9880)(7.1-Ch Out/Line-in/Mic in)
Onboard SATA/RAID: 4x Serial ATA by ICH6, 2x ATA133 RAID0/1/0+1 by VT6410
Form Factor: ATX

[jbltk]

BTW, the board I mentioned above only supports Socket 775 processors, so you'd have to upgrade if you got that one.

This board, on the other hand, supports DDR (but not DDR2), as well as Socket 478 processors. But it has PCI-Ex16 for graphics.

Albatron "PX915P4C" i915P Chipset Motherboard For Intel Socket 478 CPU

Key features:

Supported CPU: Socket 478 Intel Pentium4 Processor(Prescott)
Chipset: i915P + ICH6
FSB: 800/533MHz
RAM: 4x DIMM Dual Channel DDR 400/333 4GB
Slots: 1x PCI-Express x16, 2x PCI-Express x1, 3x PCI
Ports: 2x PS/2, 1x LPT, 8x USB2.0(Rear 4), Audio Ports
IDE: 1x ATA 100 up to 2 Devices
SATA: 4x SATA by ICH6
Onboard Audio: Realtek ALC880 8-channel
Form Factor: ATX

If it's any good, it's probably the best bet for someone who wants to take advantage of PCI-E but doesn't want to upgrade their RAM and processor (and lose RAM latency).

Check NewEgg every few weeks. It looks like Albatron is coming out with some similar boards that use newer chipsets.

[W1zzard]

jbltk you know that bus transfer speed only matter when moving textures and geometry TO the card .. once it's there it's used from there .. so basically level loading is faster .. thats it ..

[jbltk]

Yes, the bandwidth is only used for sending the video data to the card so it can process and display it.

However, you forget that not all of the data is stored within the video card's memory. It lies dormant, loaded in the system RAM until the time that it's called up by the processor, and then it goes through the north bridge to the video card. So, the faster bandwidth between the system RAM and the video card, the better.

AGP 8x has 2.1 GB/s of throughput. PCI-E x16 has 4 GB/s. Keep in mind that PC3200 DDR has 3.2 GB/s of bandwidth, and 6.4 GB/s in Dual Channel mode.

Perhaps right now AGP may not have been entirely maxed out, but it was on its way. PCI-E is a great innovation, but its potential won't be realized entirely for a little while.

The real problem, like I said above, is DDR2 and its insufferable latency issues.

Does anyone know of any other motherboards supporting a 478-pin P4 (Prescott compatible) processor, DDR RAM, and PCI express?

So far I've only been able to find that one board on newegg listed above, and because it doesn't seem to ever get in stock (they keep bumping the "ETA" by 2 or 3 days whenever it gets close)...

[jbltk]

Something tells me that if NewEgg doesn't have it listed, it probably doesn't exist. They have just about every motherboard manufactured.