ASUS V9280S GeForce Ti4200 AGP 8X graphics adapter based on the nVidia NV28 core. Certainly one of the esthetically most pleasing cards currently available and a beast when it comes to performance.
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| ASUS V9280 A Case Study of AGP 3.0 | |
| (Review by MS, Dec. 9, 2002) |
Summary
The current grain of wisdom describes AGP 8X as an utterly useless feature with no benefit for performance that would go beyond a fraction of a percent in frame rate improvement. We have taken the latest edition of the nV28-based ASUS V9280S and run it at AGP 8X, AGP 4X as well as in forced AGP 2.0 (4X) mode by disabling the respective pins on the AGP interface. Our results show that representative D3D gaming and benchmark applications in fact do not profit from AGP greater than 2X, however, the situation is entirely different in a high end OpenGL environment.
Aside from dissecting the changes from AGP 2.0 to AGP 3.0, we are looking in more detail at the capabilities and performance of the ASUS V9280S in comparison to both the older V8420 (Ti4200) and the V8460 (Ti4600)
As always, there is not a one sentence description of our findings possible but suffice it to say there are a few surprises.
ASUS V9280S GeForce Ti4200 AGP 8X graphics adapter based on the nVidia NV28 core. Certainly one of the esthetically most pleasing cards currently available and a beast when it comes to performance.
AGP 8X will be the last step in the parallel 32-bit AGP interface before the next big leap that is the implementation of a PCI Express-based graphics interface. This is probably best summarized on Intel's website:
Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is a high-performance, component level interface targeted at 3-D graphical display applications. Retaining backward compatibility with the older AGP 4x technology, AGP 8x doubles the graphics bandwidth of the AGP interface to 2.1 gigabytes per second (GB/s) which is designed to benefit applications on today's most popular workstation platforms. It is expected to impact the desktop market segment in 2003 as desktop applications become more bandwidth-intensive.
AGP 8x technology is intended to be the last parallel interface step that meets the industry's requirements before transitioning to a PCI Express-based serial graphics solution in 2004. The PCI Express architecture is a high-speed, general-purpose, serial I/O interconnect that provides a unifying standard, consolidating a number of I/O interconnects within a platform.
(I like the graphical display)
AGP 8X or AGP 3.0 is an evolution of the older AGP 1.0 and 2.0 specifications and maintains backward compatibility with the older standards. As always, the evolution of the interface will also include the detection of some dead wood in the process, that is, support for features that were integral once but have either outlived their usefulness or else turned out to be less important than previously thought.
In short, there are a number of improvements and changes as well as removal of unwanted features and we'll have the details next.
Credit where credit is due, some of the ideas in this review were picked up from this article on xbit-labs
Next Page: => AGP evolution in Detail =>
