The first PCI Express tests: NVIDIA NV34 and ATI RV380
Today everyone is urging to write about future PCI Express 16x graphics cards and discuss capabilities of this bus, however it´s still pure theory. The PCI Express... RV380 & FX5200 article published at Chinese HKE PC sheds the first light on the practical side.
Of course, you shouldn´t consider this test of beta cards with beta drivers on a beta motherboard as the utter truth. But anyway this doesn´t lower the interest in the PCI Express 16x experiments.
So, the battle was settled between somehow obtained engineering samples of PCI Express-based NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (NV34, 0.15µm, external AGP => PCI Express bridge, Hynix TSOP II memory, 275/400MHz) and ATI 9600XT (RV380, i.e. RV360 + PCI Express, 0.13µm, 128MB 2.8ns Samsung BGA memory, 450MHz GPU clock).
NV34 PCI Express
NV34
AGP => PCI Express bridge
RV380
RV380
The testbed was assembled from Gigabyte´s motherboard (i915G + ICH6R), 2.8E GHz Intel Pentium 4 (Prescott core, LGA 775, A0 stepping), 512MB Kingston DDR400 CL2 RAM, MS Windows XP Professional SP1.
i915G + ICH6R, 2.8E GHz Pentium 4 Prescott, LGA 775
The testbed to compare was based on AGP version of these graphics cards, i875P + ICH5R chipset, 2.8C GHz Pentium 4 (Northwood), the same memory and OS.
I don´t think that the results below can clearly indicate anything, including the capabilities of AGP => PCI Express bridge of GeForce FX 5200. The testbed is "very beta" and to me it seems like another chance to look at the future hardware...
Source: HKE PC
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