PCI Express

[Tsukiyomi]

Is this also gonna make the AGP8x the last of its kind ? Because ive heard that many of the companies are starting to focus more on the PCI Express? not sure though if someone else knows more please reply

[MemnochTheCaT]

Well, for high-end graphics cards, PCI Express will replace AGP8X, and eventually you will not see AGP slots on motherboards at all. Slot and Interface migrations on motherboards has been a constant over the years.

Some notable interfaces that we have seen :

8-Bit ISA
16-Bit ISA
32-Bit VLB
32-Bit MCA
32-Bit PCI
64-Bit PCI
AGP (1X/2X/4X/8X)

The really nice thing about PCI Express is that you can have two or more video cards that can both work at full speed, as opposed to AGP+PCI systems, in which one card is hampered by the legacy 32-bit/33Mhz PCI interface.

EDIT : As far as 'focusing' on PCI express, well pretty much all the major companies have already put PCI express cards in the pipeline, and for a while (maybe 2-3 years, like PCI is still around for low end/midrange) we will see cards released for BOTH AGP and PCI Express .. with little performance increase until we get a couple generations ahead. The PCI Riva TNT vs. AGP Riva TNT, there was no performance difference because the bottleneck was the graphics chip and ram itself, not the interface. But by the time we get to Geforce 3 PCI vs AGP, AGP had started to show real advantages.