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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (121029)	12/7/2000 2:44:08 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Joe, <But AGP sucks at every respect. It's premise is flawed, the execution is flawed, and just about everything related to it is bad. The premise of a main computer memory being used in high performance graphics systems for storage for the graphics card is downright comical. Connecting AGP to the Northbridge is just about the ugliest design one can think off.> The story of AGP is an interesting one. Like you said, AGP was primarily designed for UMA graphics. And like you said, the benefits of UMA is questionable (except for chipsets which integrate graphics, like 810 or the other UMA chipsets that the AMD Duron guys wish they had.) But AGP was also designed for high-speed texture downloading from main memory to local graphics memory. And it has succeeded in that aspect. <All of the cards that were produced in either PCI and AGP showed minimal to no performance improvement for AGP.> This proves absolutely nothing. Those cards you are talking about do not take advantage of AGP-specific features, which is why PCI versions are available. Those which do take advantage of AGP (such as GeForce 2 and Quadro) are among the top performers in their respective market segments. <The only rational reason for AGP (assuming that there was some logic to it) were either the monopolistic reasons, or to create churn, force an un-natural upgrade cycle.> I hope the story I gave above paints a much more rational picture than the old "Intel is a big bad monopoly" picture that you are painting. If not, I'll have to resort to labeling you an AMDroid. ;-) <How about X-box-2? I doubt about P4, since it will still be too power hungry, but the Tualatin versions may be coming.> Microsoft should get it right the first time. Unlike the PC, console platforms are meant to stay rather constant throughout its lifetime. Sony PS1 has lasted a long time, and in fact, nothing in that system runs over 66 MHz. But that console still has games being released for it, most notably Final Fantasy IX, the latest in the best-selling RPG series. Having an "X-Box 2" so soon after the first X-Box makes no sense for the console market, and it just forces developers to either develop for one or the other. Even 100% cross-compatibility won't help, because different performance characteristics will always affect the choices developers make. <The only thing in Sony's favor is that most people will be still connecting these consoles to the same low quality TVs that we use today, somewhat reducing the potential advantage of X-Box.> You saw me arguing before how this fact screams for a faster processor. In PC gaming, high resolution means the graphics subsystem becomes the bottleneck (pixel fill rate). Low resolution means the CPU becomes the bottleneck (polygon count). OK, so this is oversimplifying things, but it can't hurt for Microsoft to switch to a faster processor right from the beginning. Tenchusatsu