AGP or PCI-e?

[Ninten-doh]

Quick question...
If I only plan on using a PC monitor, and I have a PCI GeForce4 video card I plan to use, is there any reason why I should get a PC with an AGP slot instead of one with PCI-e?  Seems like the PCI-e would suit my current needs and be more future-proof.  Thoughts?

[Timoe]

I think the Arcade VGA card that Ultimarc makes is only available in AGP, so if you wanted to hook up a real arcade monitor to your computer someday you might have problems.

I know I'm having problems with this.  Both my computers DO NOT have an AGP slot.

[Ninten-doh]

Yeah, I know about the Arcade VGA only being AGP.  Major con in the decision process.   

[hnugz]

since you only plan on using a pc monitor, go with the newest technology, pci-e.

[vader]

GeForce 4, does that even come in PCI-e ?  Don't confuse PCI and PCI-E.  E is the newest technology the newer MB are using.  Of course the board will also have
standard PCI slots so you card will still work.  If your gonna use a AVGA, you definitely want one with a AGP.

Tim

[Havok]

PCI-e is the best choice for a computer monitor hookup only. I'm sure Andy will eventually update the ArcadeVGA anyways - it's gone through a couple revisions already.

[ZeroPoint]

Choose PCI-EXPRESS, even if you later on change to a real Arcade monitor.

You won

[vader]

I would email Andy first and see if you can get a ETA on his update to make sure you don't make a uninformed decision.  I would hate to see you buy a PCI-E board with no AGP slot only to not have a AVGA available for a year or so.  Of course if you never plan to buy a monitor such as the WG D9200 and/or arcade monitor and just plan on using the PC monitor, you won't have any worries as Havok said above.

Tim

[MikeQ]

Technically PCI-E should be better.  When applications write data directly to a video card with going through an API like D3D, DirectX or OpenGL, they get a pointer directly to video memory and write into it.  Video memory is very fast.  The bus however isn't as fast.  When CPU access of the frame buffer occurs, it goes through a mechanism called "fast writes".   This means that the writes occur at the speed of the AGP/PCI-e bus.  PCI-e is faster so theoretically, games that directly access the frame buffer would perform better on a PCI-e configuration.

[pointdablame]

If you won't be running newer games on this system EVER.. and you know that it'll only be for MAME, go with AGP.  You can then use an AVGA if you ever wanted to, and you will never really need a brand new video card for MAME, even if you want to try to run newer CHD games.  AGP will still be around for a number of years, there will be cards, and I'm betting there will also be AVGA cards.

PCI-E is the new format, get it if you want to futureproof your system a little bit, or if you're fairly certain that you'll be upgrading this PC as opposed to just getting a newer one down the line.

MikeQ's explanation is true, but is mostly irrelevant for a MAME PC.  You won't see any performance gains on a PCI-E card over an AGP card using MAME.

[guytalbot]

If you areplanning on playing the latest cutting edge computer games then go with pci-e, if you are planning on running just mame an agp card will be just fine. 

[subcriminal]

equivalent being used to it's potential even with the latest games. Identical AGP 8X cards have benchmarked quicker in some cases than their PCIe equivilent. Future proofing your PC is one thing but I reckon PCIe can wait a while! I've got a GeForce 6800 Ultra PCIe in my PC at the moment but by the time games start using it my processor, RAM and mainboard will probably need upgrading!