Member Avatar for Catweazle

There will doubtless be a lot of disappointed gamers, but it seems the Nvidia 6800 Ultra and the ATi Radeon X850XT are the 'end of the road' for AGP gamers. Those who have been waiting for updated and improved cards to arrive have been waiting in vain, it appears.

Although Nvidia announced a while back now that it will not be producing an AGP version of its 7800 series cards, there have been quite a few AGP gamers waiting for the arrival of ATi's R520 series cards. ATi, it was rumoured, had provided for the new cards to be available in AGP format as well as in PCI-E format.

Bad news, I'm afraid! ATi will be releasing AGP versions of the X1300 and X1600 series cards, but the high end X1800 series cards will be PCI-E only! If you want that gaming beast to remain 'cutting edge' then I'm afraid it's time for a motherboard upgrade. PCI-E is the way forward!

It seems ATi have realised that not enough high end cards would be purchased in AGP format to make the adaptation worthwhile to pursue, and I'd have to agree with them. PCI-E motherboard, anyone?

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Useful, practical next steps for people caught between staying on AGP and moving to the newer slot — the thread raises the right concerns (thanks to and ). Two realistic choices exist: squeeze more life out of an AGP platform, or plan a platform upgrade to PCI Express. The short decision comes down to budget, expected lifetime for the machine, and whether you want long‑term driver/feature support.

If you stay on AGP for now:

  • Treat the platform as mature hardware: buy only well‑supported, proven cards (prefer vendors with solid driver records), confirm your power supply and case cooling will cope, and update your motherboard BIOS and chipset drivers before fitting a new card.
  • Before swapping GPUs uninstall current graphics drivers (use the OS uninstaller/Device Manager), reboot, fit the card and then install the manufacturer’s latest drivers to avoid conflicts.
  • Expect diminishing driver updates and fewer new features over time; factor that into whether a secondhand high‑end AGP card is good value.

If you move to PCI Express:

  • Plan a platform upgrade (motherboard, possibly CPU and RAM). Back up everything and be prepared to do a clean OS install — it avoids subtle driver and stability problems after big hardware changes.
  • Choose a motherboard with the expansion and power features you want, and consider resale of your AGP parts to offset cost.

A few general pointers: profile a few of the games you play first (are they GPU‑ or CPU‑bound?) — that will help prioritise spending. If the goal is a one‑cycle performance bump on a tight budget, a stable AGP upgrade can make sense; for longevity and access to future GPU features, porting to PCI‑E is the better long‑term choice.

Member Avatar for jwenting

Not the only reason. The performance of the AGP bus is also a limiting factor.
Unless an AGP-16x standard came around the current crop is pretty much as fast as they can get.

And also remember that the card manufacturers often also make mobos. Unless more PCI-E cards hit the market in lue of AGP cards, the uptake of PCI-E (which has been kinda slow because of the higher cost) won't really happen for a while yet.

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