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Why no PCI Express AMD motherboards?

Vieo

Member
I'm gonna be replacing my GeForceFX 5200. I was wondering if I should just wait and upgrade to a PCI Express motherboard then get a PCI Express video card. Also, since I heard AMD's CPUs are better for gaming, I'm considering one instead of a Intel this time around. Anyway, I started looking around at different motherboards. I checked out Newegg.com and from what I can see, there aren't any AMD CPU motherboards that have PCI Express slots. So what gives? Is PCI Express for Intel CPUs only?
 

Buck

Member
there will be pci-e for 939 and maybe 754 sockets by the end of this year. wait a couple months and maybe save a few bucks on whatever you'd get now.
 
I'm about to give up on upgrading my PC. Everything I want in one is being delayed. I thought for sure at this time PCI Express would be the standard.
 

gohepcat

Banned
Just wait a little bit. PCI express is coming to the AMD platform soon, and yes the AMD 64 platform is the best platform for gaming.
 
From theinquirer (kick ass if this all happens)

NFORCE 4 will be the name of the project that will finally bring PCI Express to the Athlon K8 market. This chipset will be socket 754/939 ready and 940 compatible and all CPUs Athlon 64s, FX, Sempr0ns and Opterons will work on it.
The platform will have one to two PCI express 16 slots making this Geforce 6800 SLI mode possible for not quite as much crazy money as you'll have to invest in Tumwater and Xeon CPU.

The good news for Sound Storm lovers is that this chipset finally features these nice audio capabilities. It's now called Sound Storm 2 - no surprise there - but we don’t know anything about its features as yet.

Nvidia PCI Express stuff was scheduled for Q4 and it hasn't changed from that so far. We wrote Nvidias C8K-04 captured in living hues and now we know that this is the Nforce 4 project. µ

Last time we asked Nvidia's Drew Henry director of this chipset business about Nforce 5 for Intel CPU's he said laughing where is Nforce 4. This is your answer Drew. µ



---------------------------

OUR CROATIAN FRIEND Theo Valich decided to share some information with us regarding Nforce 4 chipset, the one we mentioned last week.
The chipset will be Socket 754/939 and 940 capable and will have multiprocessing capabilities. You will be able to use it as a single CPU platform. And you will also be able to use it as a two way, four way and up to a maximum of eight way as a multiprocessing platform.

This chipset will support a maximum of 32 PCI-E lanes says Theo, has suggested 1x16 X PCI-E slot, one 1 x 8X for SLI card and four times one lane for peripheral devices. This definitely confirms our previous claim that Nforce 4 will be a platform which will let you plug two Geforce 6 series PCI-E cards into a machine and end up with a much cheaper MP machine than those based on Intel's "Tumwater" chipset.

The chipset will support five PCI slots, two times Nvidia Gbit Ethernet and Nvidia RAID, similar in function to Intel's "Matrix Array", says Theo.

The Nforce 4, CK8-04 will support eight S-ATA drives and six P-ATA drives and for additional connectivity you will have no less then 10 USB 2.0 ports.

As for sound freaks, this chipset will feature SP-10, Soundstorm 2 audio that will be Dolby Digital 5.1 compliant and it will be able to do EX effects at 20 GFlops processing power. Soundstorm 2 supports 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 speaker configurations.


It sounds good doesn't it? But it will arrive towards the very end of this year. µ
 
Aww DAMNIT, thanks to this topic I now have yet ANOTHER reason to be undecided as to WHEN to get and build my new PC. I thought PCI Express was further off. Though I suspose I could always just get a current board and than replace it when the PCI Express boards come out. Though I would hate to get to take the CPU out of a board, there a bitch enough to put ON, and I have never taken one off.

But then I would have to buy a PCI-E video card. Unless of course the board had an AGP slot as well, but I highly doubt that.

~Black Deatha
 

XMonkey

lacks enthusiasm.
CrimsonSkies said:
I'm about to give up on upgrading my PC. Everything I want in one is being delayed. I thought for sure at this time PCI Express would be the standard.

Exact same situation i'm in. Really frustrating especially since college is starting soon.
 

Vieo

Member
I don't know what to do. All I know is, this GeForceFX 5200 isn't cutting it and I'm never going to buy a card at the low end of the spectrum again as they are waste of money and only good at playing last gen's games. I couldn't even play HALO right out of the box with this card. I had to download new drivers, even then I can't run it at 800x600 unless all effects are turned off and I have a 19" inch NEC FE991SB monitor. It looks horrid!

I want to be playing DOOM3, HL2, and The Sims 2 at max setting by the time all the games have been released, damn it!

I wouldn't mind buying a motherboard with both PCI-X and AGP slots, but who knows if they'll make them. It would be a lot better than upgrading all at once. I'd be able to use my old AGP card until I'm ready for a PCI-X card.
 

Mrbob

Member
You can't even play Doom 3 at max settings right now (Need a 512MB card)....

But, depending on your other hardware specifics (Ram, CPU, hdd, sound, etc) I'd recommend upgarding to a 9800PRO.

It's a great video card and is only 200 bucks. It'll give you playable frames in all the games you mentioned and should be good enough to last until all this PCI-E stuff filters itself out.
 
Dual Geforce 6600 GTs(or 6800gt if available) in SLI Mode have me waiting for the Nforce 4.

Very interesting how the performance will be in HL2 and Doom 3.
 

rastex

Banned
No reason to wait for PCI-Express right now, I'm a very firm believer that you shouldn't pick up on tech until it's 2nd or 3rd revision (usually 3rd). I'm just building a new comp, a64 3000+, and an x800 pro. This will be able to run Doom3 and HL2 at high settings with great resolution, and considering all the games that are gonna be based on these engines I'll be fine for the next 2 years. At that point there's goign to be a MAJOR push in the computing market with Longhorn and all that stuff.

Seriously, don't spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on the latest tech now. You can get a DAMN good system for a very reasonable price that'll last a few years. Then when the new Windows comes out there's going to be a big new push in technology that is going to make everything obsolete. Just think of the change from Win3.1 to Win95.
 
rastex said:
No reason to wait for PCI-Express right now, I'm a very firm believer that you shouldn't pick up on tech until it's 2nd or 3rd revision (usually 3rd). I'm just building a new comp, a64 3000+, and an x800 pro. This will be able to run Doom3 and HL2 at high settings with great resolution, and considering all the games that are gonna be based on these engines I'll be fine for the next 2 years. At that point there's goign to be a MAJOR push in the computing market with Longhorn and all that stuff.

Seriously, don't spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on the latest tech now. You can get a DAMN good system for a very reasonable price that'll last a few years. Then when the new Windows comes out there's going to be a big new push in technology that is going to make everything obsolete. Just think of the change from Win3.1 to Win95.

AGREED!

Its really not worth it to wait.

peace
 
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