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Loading ...AGP: Changed my Mind, Kill It Off
khenry
As pointed out in Issue 45’s feature, several of us are still running socket A machines with AGP slots, my backup machine included.
I was one of AGP’s greatest defenders but when I see some manufacturers failing to include three “keys†to the connector for AGP 8x on their X1950 series cards, which will result in a refusal to boot in some motherboards ( like mine, Giga-byte’s GA-K8NSNXP-939 ), then now I’m all for ditching it.
If you’re going to keep an old interface alive then the resulting cards should work in the maximum number of AGP motherboards left in use. Downgrading to the two keys because you believe no-one needs the higher voltages anymore and not guaranteeing it will work across the board, is, in my view, a waste of electronics. To be fair, this view has been influenced by having a X800 card refuse to work, though its failure ensured I had a card with SM 3.0, so perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.
On balance, you could argue that this is Giga-byte’s fault for not ensuring that this individual board was more widely compatible, more than thinking that it’s the graphics card assemblers’ responsibility to leave in the 1x/2x AGP voltage key.
Should the rumours about AGP bridging chips prove to be true, hopefully any resulting cards will feature three keys. If the newer cards fail to rise above the current midrange, then it’s another reason to just get building next year.
All in all, the transition from ISA to PCI was much more structured and orderly, and there was no confusion or hedging of bets that I can recall. I don’t remember any card makers dragging out the elder of the two technologies quite so much. Since processing speeds jumped from ISA’s 8.3 to 33Mhz on the newer bus, maybe the benefits were so much clearer and the public wanted to upgrade.
It’s another area where the price of the outgoing technologies will decide whether any other equipment goes inside this PC or whether it gets left as is. The one silver lining is that it’s the same chipset providing the best value at the moment, it’ll just be on PCI-E instead.
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