[Triple Ace]

I need a new card as well. But, if I get on social ssecurity disability I'm going to get a brand new rig.

[Nix]

For some reason, my instructor for comp. architecture used "framebuffer" whenever referring to video ram in general, when we covered it one week.  Maybe I didn't get it or he needs an update on his curriculum.  gah. Anywho, since we ARE talking about videocards.. and performance... and we're not trying to one-up each other.... 

PCI-E Card - Bridge - AGP Slot.  Would this be a good combination, if I were to upgrade my videocard?  My current board has an AGP slot on it, and  I still feel I can get quite a bit of life out of my motherboard and processor before they're in need of some sort of upgrade.  I would like to get a PCI-Ex16 card, Bridge it so I can use it in my current system, and upgrade the backbone later.  Are these bridges reliable enough to run the card at AGP specs? or do they severely cripple the card's performance so much that I'd be better off sticking with a pure AGP card at the moment?  I really have no idea how these bridges work or anything, really havent heard of them till I read something in one of these threads recently. 

[CP5670]

The bridges are chips that come on various AGP cards themselves, in order to convert signals from a GPU designed for PCIE into AGP ones. There isn't any performance hit from the bridge alone, but these bridged cards are considered fully AGP and when people refer to AGP cards it includes them.

As for whether you should upgrade or not, it depends on what you have now. If you can get something less than $150 that is a big upgrade then it's worth considering, but every AGP card over $150 has a PCIE equivalent that's cheaper by at least $70, enough to buy a decent PCIE motherboard.

[Nix]

Ohh, how interesting... cause I was thinking it was sorta like the "slocket" adaptor, where you can stick a socketed processor onto an adaptor card and put it into a slotted processor motherboard.  After reading an Anandtech article comparing the 9800 Pro (which is what I have) and the 6600GT AGP, newer games see performance gains of 20-30 % in certain situations, and the core/mem clock is nearly the same as the PCI-e variant.  Although it looks tempting,  I'm thinking I'm just going to be better off doing the right thing and buying a pure PCI-E videocard and pure PCI-E motherboard.  I really shouldn't cut corners, which I never really have when I build my own personal systems, besides, prices are falling on PCI-E cards, while AGP cards are still a bit more expensive.