NVIDIA and ATI announced PCI Express videocards this week. Tech Report and Anandtech have a good bit of information on them. From Tech Report:
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NVIDIA announces PCI Express product line
by Scott Wasson - 09:47 am, February 17, 2004
NVIDIA has decided to jump into the PCI Express game right away with a series of products based on its current GPUs plus an AGP-to-PCI bridge chip. NVIDIA's custom-developed AGP-to-PCI bridge will sit between the GPU and the PCI Express bus, translating the GPU's AGP talk into PCI-E language. According to NVIDIA, the GeForce PCX product line based on this arrangement will look like so:
NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5950- based on the award-winning GeForce architecture, this new GPU delivers extreme graphics power and performance for extreme gamers.
NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5750 - designed for high-performance gaming with NVIDIA's full suite of cinematic effects and an unmatched feature set.
NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5300 -delivers state-of-the-art, best-in-class features and the reliability users have come to expect from NVIDIA, at an affordable price.
NVIDIA GeForce PCX 4300 - provides entry-level pricing coupled with strong performance, unbeatable visual quality, and DVD playback.
Since these products are based on existing GPUs, sorting out what's what shouldn't be too hard. The GeForce PCX 5300, for instance, is based on the GeForce FX 5200. In some cases, core and memory clock speeds have been tweaked a little bit, just to give the new products a little more juice, as happened during the transition to AGP 8X. The tricky one is GeForce PCX 4300, which is actually based on a GPU called the GeForce MX 4000, which seems to be a rebadged GeForce4 MX.
You can see an image of the GeForce FX 5300, with its PCI Express interface, here.
NVIDIA has pledged to ship its PCI Express solutions "in lock-step with Intel," and claims to have shipped "more than 1000 PCI Express boards to customers and partners." I expect that means we'll see some GeForce PCX performance numbers somewhere on the web today; we'll keep our eyes peeled for them. Don't expect much in the way of performance gains over the AGP versions of these products, though; bridging to PCI-E alone isn't likely to achieve that.
Of course, the bridged approach to talking PCI Express is only a temporary, less-than-perfect measure. NVIDIA's NV40-series GPUs should come with native PCI Express interfaces built in. For now, though, NVIDIA has a family of PCI Express-compatible products ready to roll.
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It looks like NVIDIA is gonna release an initial set of cards soon that bridge AGP and PCI together, converting them into a PCI-Express format. The new cards are basically PCI-E versions of the current GeForce FX series. The GeForce PCX 4300 is actually a revamped GeForce 4 MX series. As of now, there isn't really any new cards, just old cards converted to PCI-E. I suppose there will be some performance increases with the PCI-E, but no benchmarks have been posted yet. The later high-end cards are fully PCI-E, not just the AGP-PCI bridge converter.
A videocard debate wouldn't be complete without ATI! Anandtech reports:
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PCI Express
ATI's entire roadmap revolves around the transition to PCI Express, which ATI is particularly happy with since they will be providing native PCI Express GPUs from the get-go. The difference between a native PCI Express GPU and a "bridge" solution is that the latter has a little translator that takes PCI Express interface commands and converts them to AGP interface commands which are then sent off to the GPU. Obviously a bridge solution isn't very elegant and it isn't desirable from any standpoint other than a time-to-market one as it's always quicker and easier to have one GPU that can talk to any interface. Eventually no GPUs will have this silly PCI Express bridge, but at the start ATI is happy to announce that all of their GPUs will be "bridge-free."
In order to accomplish a bridge-free roadmap, ATI has to have two versions of every GPU: a PCIe and an AGP version (or an AGP substitute). Keep this in mind as we look at the GPUs due out in '04 since you'll be seeing two per market segment, one AGP and one PCIe.
It's also worth noting that all of ATI's GPUs will be available in both PCIe and AGP flavors throughout 2004.
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ATI's new videocards will NOT feature the PCI-AGP Bridge converter. Supposedly, the bridge creates a slight disadvantage from true PCI-E cards, so this is definitely a plus. ATI also says that every videocard they release this year will come in AGP and PCI-E format so everyone will be able to use them. NVIDIA has simply said that they'll release the bridged PCI-E cards that works on all AGP mobos and true PCI-E's. Neither company really has an advantage here, but it's nice to see that both companies are keeping all consumers in mind.
More detailed information on the different ATI cards can be found on Anandtech's main page. ATI's cards are almost completely redesigned from the 9800, 9600, and 9000 series. The R420 and R423 are high-end cards that outperform the Radeon 9800 XT. They'll be very expensive, of course. Next comes the RV380 which is along the lines of a 9600XT. The new ATI low-end card is the RV370 which is basically a Radeon 9000 revamped. All of the new ATI cards WILL be in AGP format, so this isn't just for PCI-E motherboards...ATI is releasing a complete new set of videocards in the low, mid, and high end budget.
This is a ton of news for gamers, especially considering the videocard market is gonna get even more saturated with different kinds of cards. Now there's gonna be a PCI-E and AGP version of every ATI card released this year.
Oh well, it's still good news. Better videocards means the current ones will go down in price, and that's a plus for gamers everywhere.
-Lasereth