Is AGP Dead? Buy now?!

[eandmwilson]

I just upgraded my system MB to an AGP only board. Now it looks like PCI-E is the wave of the future, and AGP boards may be going, well, by the board...

SO, I'm looking at the AIW 9800 and the AIW X800.

Does it look like the X800 may be the last of the AIW AGP cards?

For capturing TV, VHS etc, and converting to a DVD for later playback, is the X800 going to be significantly better than the 9800?

Are there any performance stats to back up either card's capture perfomance?

The rest of my system is rocking OK--AMD 3200, 1 GB DDR, decent sound. I used to do capture on an AIW 7500 on a much weaker system, I suspect the newer cards will do better?

Thanks!

[ROF]

The x800 is definitely better. Why?

Twice as much RAM onBoard, GDDR3 Vs. DDR2(1/4 to 1/2 times as fast), twice as many graphics pipelines, plus many other factors.

This is probably the last of the line for AGP. While you will continue to see AGP cards on the shelf this year, nothing new will be coming out. My suggestion if you are looking towards buying an AGP card now would be to wait at least six months and buy it at half of todays pricing.

[eandmwilson]

No doubt the X800 beats a 9800 as a video card. But what about analog capture performance? I'm not interested in gaming, just watching TV and converting recorded TV & capturing VHS tapes to DVD.

[ROF]

Neither is better. It's your computer specs that determine the ability of converting, capturing, and so forth.

[dun4cheap]

Neither is better, I would probably have to disagree. Doesn't the AIW X800 have the Theater 550 chip. Anyhow, maybe you should to separate the tuner from the video card. I did this a while back because I was tiered of having to pay higher prices for the AIW cards. Especially when we didn't see a holle lot of improvements. The 9800 is old school, while it works I would look at the x800 or 700 for agp and maybe purchase a standalone Theater 550 card either in the PCI or USB2 venue. My last AIW card was the AIW 9000 which is in my multi media center. Works like a charm.

[mikiem]

FWIW, ati is adding agp cards to it's line-up where for a while the trend seemed to be pci xpress. Agp boards are still cheaper I think, plus not all hardware is available in pci express versions -- perhaps the most well known is soundblaster cards.

Myself, I'll worry when they stop making stuff for agp, if I'm still using it at the time. Till then, well, they still make floppy drives and those were destined for oblivion how long ago?

[ROF]

AGP boards are in most cases more expensive. On topic the AIW x800XT in AGP is $50-$75 more than it's PCI Express counterpart.

I think this is the last year for AGP total support. Most newer motherboards are now supporting PCI Express and quite a few are taking the hint from CPU makers and adding support for dual GPU via PCI Express. I wouldn't worry about AGP disappearing anytime in the next 18-24 months, but you can bet as time rolls on they will become more scarce.

[whitejremiah]

i even read something a while ago about companies working on pci express 2....which, im sure will be backwords compatable...but it shows how outdated AGP is... (dont get me wrong, im running an AGP video card myself, i cant afford to go out and replace my computer every time something new comes out....) as for capturing quality, i dont think it should really matter which of the two cards you go with...as for the theater chip, im relatively sure that it only really impacts playback...the main things that you should look into is getting relatively high quality cables (the less signal loss from the cables, the better...either go with a NICE set of RCA cables, or if you have s-video available, go with that..perferably gold plated on either of them....) and like what was pointed out, the processor itself....your processor appears to be up to par to do at least normal tv broadcast, or even dvd resolution capturing....your also gonna wanna take a look at the amount of open harddrive space you got.....capturing stuff in lossless AVI (such as huffyuv) sucks up your harddrive space REALLY fast...second best bet would be mjpg which still will chew up your harddrive space pretty fast...but not quite as bad....then take whatever output you have, and compress it to whatever...dvd, svcd, vcd, divx, xvid, wmv, rm....whatever you want to using the various programs that are listed in the conversion section of the forum.....

[dun4cheap]

The pciexpress was just not worthy enough for the upgrade. The advantage was not their. We should see some real difference with pci express2 which is when I will look to move to a new mother board.

[Kairo]

I can't speak for everyone here but I would say PCI-E is most definitely better than AGP, depending on what you use it for. I upgraded from an ATI 9200 AIW Pro (AGP) to an ATI X600 AIW Pro (PCI-E). When doing analog captures and encoding it was a small improvement but where it exceled vastly was in rendering... Not that it makes a difference to the hobbiest but if you use programs like MAYA, 3D Studio, Poser etc. It's a night and day diff. Even in Adobe Premiere it makes a big improvement because some of the filters\effects use Direct X and Open GL. AGP has a max pipeline of 8x, while PCI-E has a pipeline of 16x to 32x, (maybe even more now I'm not sure) that extra pixle pipe makes a huge diff when rendering blah, blah. If you plan on doing any prosumer or commercial editing in the near future I would say go ahead and upgrade to PCI-E. You will be glad you did, I know I am.

[ROF]

The pciexpress was just not worthy enough for the upgrade. The advantage was not their. We should see some real difference with pci express2 which is when I will look to move to a new mother board.

For gaming PCI Express hasn't done much for improvement but for Video editing (especially larger or multiple files) the PCI Express slot trashes AGP.

Switching from AGP to PCI Express in this case is like switching from 300bps to 2 Mbps network transmissions.

It's really that much better.

[JefeQuickTech]

I just built a new box (P4 3.0 GHZ Dual Core) and included the ATI X600 which uses PCI Express. I have not switched my video editing to this system yet. You mention improvements with Adobe Premiere. Would that also apply to Premiere 6.5 or only the very latest version?

[pijetro]

ROF wrote:

For gaming PCI Express hasn't done much for improvement but for Video editing (especially larger or multiple files) the PCI Express slot trashes AGP.

I would have assumed just the opposite...Interesting..
Does this apply to a prosumer who uses Adobe products for the most part?
I mean lets face it, i'm doing DV video primarily, with a few effects here and their with AE..
Are you saying that actual render times will be faster due to a PCIe card?
I thought this was totally CPU generated?
Fill me in please..

[edDV]

I just built a new box (P4 3.0 GHZ Dual Core) and included the ATI X600 which uses PCI Express. I have not switched my video editing to this system yet. You mention improvements with Adobe Premiere. Would that also apply to Premiere 6.5 or only the very latest version?

You need to divide your thinking between games and certain (rare) 3D rendering programs like Poser and the video editing, encoding and PVR world (most of us).

Lets assume you don't care about cutting edge games*.
Lets also assume you aren't authoring 3D animation or working with OpenGL (CAD, animation, modeling, other pro stuff)
--------------------------------------------------------------
On the video editing, encoding, SD/HD playback side of the line, PCI Express cards offer no advantage at this time unless you are fiddling with MPeg4 H.264 playback. Even so, the ATI X1nnn cards are not yet ready for full H.264 hardware playback and as such are not worth keeping beyond current requirements. My advice, wait for a card that can at least play h.264, VC-1 and HD MPeg2_TS with no CPU load.

On the effects editing side, programs like Premiere Pro 2.0 are beginning to access GPU hardware via DirectX but this is very primitive currently. We are about where games were with the first generation 3D cards. Make sure you need what the current cards do. Current cards are expected to have a very short life expectancy. The good stuff is on the horizon.

The good stuff will split into HTPC hardware CODEC needs and semi-pro effects rendering needs.

Your money is better invested in T-Bills until a card comes along with the features you really need.


* Hardware is usually 1-3 years ahead of mainstream games so there is no need to jump onto first year GPU technology unless you are trying to be cutting edge in games. It is a VERY expensive hobby.

[edDV]

The pciexpress was just not worthy enough for the upgrade. The advantage was not their. We should see some real difference with pci express2 which is when I will look to move to a new mother board.

For gaming PCI Express hasn't done much for improvement but for Video editing (especially larger or multiple files) the PCI Express slot trashes AGP.

Switching from AGP to PCI Express in this case is like switching from 300bps to 2 Mbps network transmissions.

It's really that much better.

Can you explain where this advantage kicks in? Editors only talk to the graphics card for playback or non-realtime for hardware assist. Future cards will have MPeg4 encoders.

[CapeKO]

Just read about this card on TH

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/02/nvidia_7800gs_confirms_agp_aint_dead_yet/

[edDV]

Just read about this card on TH

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/02/nvidia_7800gs_confirms_agp_aint_dead_yet/

Who are you talking to? What non-game functions are limited by AGP Bus bandwidth? Standard PCI can handle 25 Mb/s HDTV streams.

[rhegedus]

The pciexpress was just not worthy enough for the upgrade. The advantage was not their. We should see some real difference with pci express2 which is when I will look to move to a new mother board.

For gaming PCI Express hasn't done much for improvement but for Video editing (especially larger or multiple files) the PCI Express slot trashes AGP.

Switching from AGP to PCI Express in this case is like switching from 300bps to 2 Mbps network transmissions.

It's really that much better.

Can you explain where this advantage kicks in? Editors only talk to the graphics card for playback or non-realtime for hardware assist. Future cards will have MPeg4 encoders.

Once again, edDV beats me to it.

ROF, you really do talk a load of crap sometimes:

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1384321#1384321

FOR THE LAST TIME, A GRAPHICS CARD HAS VERY LITTLE INFLUENCE ON VIDEO EDITING.

[MJA]

I just upgraded my system MB to an AGP only board. Now it looks like PCI-E is the wave of the future, and AGP boards may be going, well, by the board...

SO, I'm looking at the AIW 9800 and the AIW X800.

Does it look like the X800 may be the last of the AIW AGP cards?

For capturing TV, VHS etc, and converting to a DVD for later playback, is the X800 going to be significantly better than the 9800?

Are there any performance stats to back up either card's capture perfomance?

The rest of my system is rocking OK--AMD 3200, 1 GB DDR, decent sound. I used to do capture on an AIW 7500 on a much weaker system, I suspect the newer cards will do better?

Thanks!

you should bought this MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157081
it got both AGP,and PCI Express

[ROF]

FOR THE LAST TIME, A GRAPHICS CARD HAS VERY LITTLE INFLUENCE ON VIDEO EDITING.

Really? Let's hook you up with a 1MB Diamond Stealth PCI card and I'll use a modest GeForce 6600 and we'll see which works better for editing. Remember, we are not talking about rendering the final product, we are talking about working with multiple files, splicing in footage, and so forth which is what editing entails. I guarantee you my Geforce will continue functioning where your 1MB PCI card will still be attempting to display the different pieces of the puzzle and more than likely lock up the editing software being used do to the card becoming overwhelmed.

Influence on editing has nothing to do with a graphics card? I guess most budding film editors might have to disagree with that statement. I know I would.

[whitejremiah]

he said very little, not completely non existant!! if you use ANY reasonable video card...even an onboard 32mb or 64mb video.....it oughtta be enough for editing.........reguarding the video cards though, it wont make any SIGNIFICANT impact if your using anything reasonable (by that i mean, anything made within the last say 4 or 5 years)

[edDV]

FOR THE LAST TIME, A GRAPHICS CARD HAS VERY LITTLE INFLUENCE ON VIDEO EDITING.

Influence on editing has nothing to do with a graphics card? I guess most budding film editors might have to disagree with that statement. I know I would.

The graphics card needs to have adequate memory and 2D features for moving windows around your computer screen and it needs overlay. If you are working with MPeg, the display card will assist in the decode. Most any modern graphics card including motherboard video processors can handle these needs. A $40 card is all you need for 2D processing. Higher end cards (ATI 9550 up) add higher performance HDTV scaling and filtering.

If you use a program like Adobe Premiere up to version 6.5, that is about all the graphics card did. Late in DirectX 8, DirectShow DV camcorder and audio capture control was added but none of this affected the display card.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx?url=/windows/directx/downloads/vidcap.htm

Premiere Pro (v7) was a total rewrite that changed the way hardware drivers were handled. The application was written on top of DirectX9 API and used WDM, DirectShow and DirectSound for the primary hardware interface. Part of that was provisioning for effects, encoding and compositing processes to have access to hardware on the graphics and tuner cards but very little is being used at this time.

There is no need to have an expensive graphics display card at the present time.

[rhegedus]

Influence on editing has nothing to do with a graphics card? I guess most budding film editors might have to disagree with that statement. I know I would.

Then you'd be wrong, just like you were the last time you discussed this issue.

Video Rendering and Computer Performance

Best CPU and Motherboard for dv editing

All the expensive consumer cards are aimed at is gamers. Period.

The high-end professional cards like Fires and Quadros will help certain applications that take advantage of the extra hardware on them such as CAD and 3D design applications.

Video is 2D so pretty much any video card to be had on the market today will do just as good as the next so long as it supports the monitor(s) and resolutions you want from them. I'd still get a decent brand name card just so you don't have problems with it, but otherwise they all work pretty much the same. As I said before if you're using a lot of 3D effects in your video productions you may want to get a better card to take some of the load off of playback/preview of the effects but you'd be using prosumer or better apps to actually utilize any hardware acceleration from the video card.

Oh and for those that say certain cards make video look better or whatnot I'm almost certain that has nothing to do with the card itself but more with tweaking your color settings on both your monitor and video card for it to look the best.

That shut you up last time, hopefully it will do so again.

[ROF]

That shut you up last time, hopefully it will do so again.

Since you are so fond of quoting others I'm going to ask you to refer to the last sentence of the first paragraph EdDV posted above your last post.

Higher end cards (ATI 9550 up) add higher performance HDTV scaling and filtering.

So to shut you up your statement that a graphics card has very little influence is not only misleading it's quite false. It may have held water in the previous generation but if you look at what's on the market today and what's being made available soon you should be able quickly realize your error.

[thecoalman]

Maybe you ought to realize your ROF..

No doubt the X800 beats a 9800 as a video card. But what about analog capture performance? I'm not interested in gaming, just watching TV and converting recorded TV & capturing VHS tapes to DVD.

Neither is better. It's your computer specs that determine the ability of converting, capturing, and so forth.

So which is it, as the above statement seems to conflict with your current point of view. :P


<note to self> <end note to self>

[ROF]

@thecoalman

There is alot more to editing video than what you quoted. Actually what you quoted deals more with a subject called processing end product video not editing.

[draganong]

Maybe you ought to realize your ROF..

No doubt the X800 beats a 9800 as a video card. But what about analog capture performance? I'm not interested in gaming, just watching TV and converting recorded TV & capturing VHS tapes to DVD.

Neither is better. It's your computer specs that determine the ability of converting, capturing, and so forth.

So which is it, as the above statement seems to conflict with your current point of view. :P


<note to self> <end note to self>

ROF, just be quiet. You keep getting trashed all the time. How old are you, 15 ?

[ROF]

I'm not 15, but I've certainly had more intelligent coversations with 15 year olds then I've had with you. Your brain power is quite limited. I guess your next arguement is going to be how you've been here longer than me so they makes you much more intelligent.

To tell someone to shut up in a forum where expressions of thought and opinions on subjects is kind of backwards thinking and reverse to logic as to why a forum exists. Forums are here for people to discuss things. I may not agree with something, I may offer advice to others, I may offer agreement to others, but telling someone to shut up is . . . well . . . immature and quite trollish especially when you offer nothing to the conversation as you usually do.

[rhegedus]

That shut you up last time, hopefully it will do so again.

Since you are so fond of quoting others I'm going to ask you to refer to the last sentence of the first paragraph EdDV posted above your last post.

Higher end cards (ATI 9550 up) add higher performance HDTV scaling and filtering.

So to shut you up your statement that a graphics card has very little influence is not only misleading it's quite false. It may have held water in the previous generation but if you look at what's on the market today and what's being made available soon you should be able quickly realize your error.

Did you read the rest of what edDV wrote or did you just clutch at the straw you liked best?

If you check the ATI web page, you’ll see that the reference to HDTV is with respect to playback:

Innovative decoding technology with reduced reliance on the main CPU significantly improves DVD and HDTV video playback quality

Even if the card were to assist in these matters for encoding it is still only a very small part of the whole process, the overwhelming bulk of which is achieved by the grunt of the CPU.

Thus,

FOR THE LAST TIME, A GRAPHICS CARD HAS VERY LITTLE INFLUENCE ON VIDEO EDITING.

still stands, as it did the last time you dropped the subject:

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1384334#1384334



Enjoy the silence……

[ROF]

Since we have gotten off the subject of the OP request I will just restate that it's your computer specs that determine the ability of converting, capturing, and so forth. Editing video might be considered a part of those two jobs and as such your CPU does most if not all of the work. Other parts of video editing do require more GPU power and as such the statement that a graphics card has little influence upon video editing is incorrect. In some cases, perhaps, but as you've posted it as being the endall / beall on the subject that is false.

Is AGP dead? You betcha. AGP has reached the end of the line. This is the last year you will see new AGP cards released and mostly they are just minimal GPUs of PCI-Express family GPUs. If considering a new system purchase today I'd definitely go with PCI-Express. if budget is a consideration you could always buy a $30 PCI-Express card with intent of saving to buy an upgrade later on or even better yet save the $30 and buy a board with PCI-Express OnBoard video. Just make sure, and most do, to include at least one PCI-Express x16 slot on your motherboard of choice.