PCIE vs AGP

[amiabilita]

so.. how better/ faster.. or worse... is PCIE when compared to AGP?

[mcs328]

PCI-Express > AGP > PCI > ISA

[amiabilita]

is it worth upgrading to pci e?
or should I wait for something better that may be coming up soon?

[shocky123]

If you're simply looking to upgrade your graphics card, it's not worth upgrading to pci-e. You'd have to purchase a new mobo.... which is a quick $125+ that you could've spent on a nicer AGP card.

~Kyle

[Kevster]

If you're simply looking to upgrade your graphics card, it's not worth upgrading to pci-e. You'd have to purchase a new mobo.... which is a quick $125+ that you could've spent on a nicer AGP card.

~Kyle

Not to mention the roal pain in the ass it is to easily replace your mobo - especially with XP likely wanting to get revalidated again because the system hardware changed so drastically.

[Agent Plissken]

I concur, having just switched motherboards to gain PCI-e (because I had to for my new 7800 oc) I had to reinstall windows, and its a pain to assemble your whole PC again. You can get good motherboards for much less than $125 though...

[Merlin]

PCI-Express > AGP > PCI > ISA
But how noticable is the difference? Are we talking a really big bump in performance or is it something only a hard core gamer would notice?

[Agent Plissken]

I do not believe the current usage of PCI-e is a great jump, since the bottlenecks lie elsewhere for huge performance increases.

[raimin]

and isnt pci-express II comming out soon

[zippyjuan]

If you are building a whole, new computer, go with PCI Express. If you are upgrading a current computer, stay with what you have.

[shocky123]

pci-express 2 is still pretty much in the design phase, it'll likely be a solid year before high end server motherboards become equipped with it.
In terms of performance... the only difference between the AGP version of a card and the pci-E version tends to be the stock core clock and memory clocks on the cards. The cards are made with the same chipsets and memory (generally).. and it is more than likely the case that the AGP version is the under-clocked counterpart of the pci-E card. (I've easily jumped the AGP version of the 6600GT 200MHz to the equivalent of the pci-E card.. without noticable change in temperatures on the card)
If you're talking benchmark performance... you're going to have a tough time discerning a difference between the performance of a pci-E card and it's AGP bretheren until you're operating at ULTRA-HIGH resolutions with full AA/AF..... at which point the performance becomes CPU limited as opposed to AGP/PCI-e bus limited.

So.. post-disclaimer here... this is what seems to be the general trend. The AGP bus is far from being fully utilized.
The real difference in these cards is the cost... because of the pci-E bandwagon effect, the pci-E cards are now generally cheaper than the AGP versions. However, you're forced to go through all the hastle of reinstalling OS and the mobo.
If you're really up to that, you'd likely get the same performance increase by doing a fresh format and installation of your OS.

~Kyle