ORIGINAL: micagreenmachin
Ok,
The way I understand it is this....
PCI-Express is going to be the new industry standard and you will see more and more computers with this architechture. On the new MOBOs you'll have a series of PCI express slots, and one of them will be the one for the video card. It's supposed to be as fast as, if not faster than AGP for video and the rest of the slots will be backwards compatable with existing PCI technology. The idea is to get rid of the PCI bottleneck that we currently have on our systems. PCI express MOBOs will NOT have AGP slots.
The ATI card numbers work like this:
9600, 9700, 9800 = AGP cards
X600, X700, X800 = the equivilent cards, but they are the PCI-Express version.
I don't know how nVidia is handeling this.
If I'm wrong, someone please correct me.
HTH,
Todd
Wrong. X800's come in AGP and PCIE. The "X" stands for 10 which is the next line from the 9*** series. The X700 and X600 only come in PCIE for now. It's supposed to be faster but current hardware doesn't even use the full 8x yet. One benifit from PCIE is that it can deliver up to 150watts of power through the slot instead of having to supply power straight from the PSU. PCIe will not have agp but NVIDIA and ATI will come out with a PCIE to AGP bridge so you can use your agp card in the PCIE slot.
As far as the sim being able to run on the 4600 it will run, it just all depends on how high you want to crank it up. 1024x768 will probably do just fine. I would not worry about upgrading to PCIE just yet because there is yet to be a PCIe 1x mobo released and there are no PCIE soundcards or anything. The only thing that is PCIE so far is the agp.
PCIE for graphics is called PCIE 16x. The slots for other stuff is PCIE 1x.
The sim is way less stressful on your system than a FPS. Well, it all depends on what FPS. When I was using AFP, I had a 9800pro. I could crank everything to the max and play at the 1280x1024(highest my monitor will go, until my new one gets here Thursday) resolution with 4xaa and 8x af. Now the new one might be a little more demanding because of the shaders and the physics. But not much more than the original.
No there are no PCIE versions of the 9700 or 9800. Only the "x" line has PCIE.
For those of you looking for good pci graphics card, not too expensive, this is the one to get.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...102-449&depa=0
Anyone with questions as how to or what to get feel free to email me or PM me.
My specs
AMD 3000+ 64/ASUS K8V Deluxe/Sapphire X800XT 256mb VIVO/Soundblaster Audigy2/ 1 gig Corsair XMS 3200 (2x512)