PCI Express ready for prime time?

[primesuspect]

I have a customer with a big wallet, and he wants the very latest cutting edge in gaming hardware, and so he wants me to build a PCI-express based system. Are these even available yet? I keep seeing news about PCI Express GPUs, but nothing about mobos yet... Any info for me?

[GHoosdum]

One of the new Intel chipsets (915 ?)supports it, but I haven't seen an AMD chipset out for it yet.

[primesuspect]

I'm not married to one platform or the other. Are 915 mobos available yet?

[GHoosdum]

Yup:

Asus P5GD1 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-503&depa=0)
Abit AG8 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-182&depa=0)

[primesuspect]

So, as usual, it comes down to Abit vs Asus :D

Anybody with any experience with either of these?

[MediaMan]

I'd be inclined to go with ASUS. They seem to be the one in cahoots with technology developers during these early stages.

As usual, first in means first to encounter the problems.

[GHoosdum]

I'd go with Asus, too. Your customer will be happier.

[QCH]

Dell is now shipping a PCIx systems.... We ordered 24 Dell GX280's - P4 3.2GHz with 512 MB of DDR2 RAM, 80 GB SATA HD's, and ATI x300 PCIx GPU... I'd didn't really have a say in it but that is what the manager wanted.

I WILL be doing some extensive testing when they arrive and I'll tell you how they run....

[GHoosdum]

Yeah, i saw that Dell GX280 system on the Dell site when I ordered the 4600 for my parents.

[TheBaron]

if hes dishing out the money why would you build a 915 system rather than a 925X system?

[entropy]

Well, under normal circumstances I'd say go agp and place the money elsewhere, but if he really wants a cutting-edge (albeit useless right now) system then go for it :-/

p.s. - i don't really have much advice lol, missed a lot in the tech world while on vacation :(

[TheSmJ]

I wouldn't mess with PCI-E until the dust settles a bit. Benchmarks have shown that (so far) PCIE has no performance increase over AGP 8X.

Then again, it will be fun to put this b!tch together.... and it ain't my money. ;)

[primesuspect]

It's like this:

He just doesn't care about practicality. He wants CUT-TING EDGE. That's it and that's all.

925? Tell me more.....

[muddocktor]

There's a real good review of the Abit AA8 Duramax (http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQw) (i925) mobo and overclocking with a 2.8E Presshot at Hardocp they put up today. The article also has some very pertinent info on the 6800 Ultra and 20 pin psu's too. It looks like people will need to upgrade to an EPS psu if they want to run the 6800 Ultra and overclock with it.

It's a good, informative read, and the AA8 looks to be a pretty damn good performing board out of the new LGA775 boards, especially when fsb overclocking.

[TheSmJ]

How about a board which supports 2 GF 6800 Ultras in SLI?

[TheBaron]

those aren't, and wont be out for awhile. btw, ati is releasing the X800GT for SLI configurations to compete with NVIDIA's 6800GT's. thougth that might be of interest to you :D.

even if an SLI board was available, i'd wait for nforce4, which ought to have dual 16x pci-E slots

[SimGuy]

PCI Express is proven technology, just right now the graphics hardware is not designed to fully utilize the PEG16x connector, so it offers no realworld performance increase with respect to bandwidth (even though it offers more than AGP8x right now).

A Pentium 4 560 (3.6 Prescott LGA775) and ABIT AA8-DuraMax (925X) offer the fastest non-overclocked PCI Express platform as of today, but good luck finding a high-end PCI Express graphics card (AFAIK, the X800 series & 6800 series are not yet for sale in PCI Express configurations).

[mmonnin]

925 and 915 is like 875 and 865 of the current P4 chipsets. Nothing much better with 925 but its the top.

[GHoosdum]

I hadn't seen the 925 chipset yet because I can't find an Asus board for sale with that chipset... :(

Although the marketing guy from Asus that I talked to said that their new high-end motherboards (like the supposedly upcoming 925 model) are going to have 802.11g built-in to the motherboard.

//edit: It promises to be a very nice board:
http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket775/p5ad2-p/overview.htm

[Thrax]

It's a pity that the 925/915 is no ****ing faster than the 875/865. Idjits.

[edcentric]

SmJ, there is a work station mobo that has two pciex slots and will run the SLI setup.
BUT, they are one 16 and one 8, not two 16's.
And the mobo isn't fast.

[TheSmJ]

From what I gather, PCIE isn't worth the trouble right now, as the chipsets supporting them are too new, meaning the mobos are too new, meaning you'd better wait a few revisions before buying into it.

[muddocktor]

Since PCI-X high end vid cards are non-existent on the market right now, you might want to base his system on socket 939 and go with an FX53 and either the 6800 ultra or the X800 Ultra Platinum AGP cards, which you can actually find on the market. Anandtech has a very good socket 939 roundup (http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128) and it looks like the MSI Nforce3 250 board really kicks serious ass on the i915 and i925 boards that Anandtech has tested. They show benchmarks of the 939 boards with 915 and 925 boards included and the FX53 basically wipes the floor with the 3.6 Presshot. ;D ;D

Here's 3 of the benches I copied from Anandtech for you to look at:

[Omega65]

I have a customer with a big wallet, and he wants the very latest cutting edge in gaming hardware, and so he wants me to build a PCI-express based system. Are these even available yet? I keep seeing news about PCI Express GPUs, but nothing about mobos yet... Any info for me?

If your customer wants the best gaming platform then his only choices are the Athlon FX-53 or the Athlon 64 3800+.

[GHoosdum]

How did it turn out, Brian?

[primesuspect]

still haven't made my move yet. I'll update this thread when I do.

[GHoosdum]

Wow, you sound like a secret agent!

//edit: I just realized that this thread title is a pun!

Go agent prime! ;D