Taipei (Taiwan) – You knew it was coming. Four years after the introduction of the first PCI Express chipset, Intel’s 925X, the accelerated graphics port (AGP) is finally running out of steam and products using AGP are very scarce.  

If you are still running graphics cards through an AGP interface, you already have to look hard to find any options on the market. When PCI Express became more popular, AGP cards went primarily into cheap PCs and emerging markets. However, that changed sometime last year when  Eastern Europe, Russia, CIS and China stopped buying AGP cards and moved on to PCI Express as well. This means there is just the upgrade market for several countries and states in Europe and North America left, which is not large enough to justify new products.

Last year in August, add-in board companies saw AGP finally losing substantial product-mix share and it was only a matter of time when these manufacturers would stop introducing new AGP parts. As it stands right now, the Radeon 3850 appears to be the final AGP "high-end" part on the market.

So, if you are looking to upgrade your ancient, but still kicking AGP system, your options just shrunk to GeCube’s dual-slot overclocked and Sapphire's single-slot 3850 512 MB cards. We were told heard that the best selling AGP parts are still Radeon 2600XT cards and it remains to be seen how the Radeon 3850 last. If you own an AGP rig, time is slowly running out.

AGP was developed by Intel as a bus designed to replace PCI in graphics applications. AGP was introduced in 1997 with a bandwidth 266 MB/s. AGP 8x topped out at 2133 MB/s.

went the way of the beta tape

Jun 04, 2008 13:59     

It seems newer isn't always better. It is like the beta tape that was suppose to replace vhs. Vhs is still around (for recording) and beta is long gone. This is true of the 8-track and the cassette. 8 track was newer but the cassette out lasted it.
TomLeeM/BigWarpGuy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -8

Don't go!

Jun 04, 2008 17:59     

Oh GAWD, I'm going to miss you... For years, you showed me things, incredible things I could only dream of. Took me to places I could never have gone before and helped me immerse myself in the experience... Wait, what? PCI Express 16 is HOW much faster!? You can put HOW MANY cards in a machine!?! OH, OK. Uh... AGP, don't let the door hit you on the way out (and while you're leaving, can you take out the garbage, too? Yeah, that'd be great.). Progress, baby!

philstuf report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

idc but...

Jun 04, 2008 23:22     

i think it's time for AGP to go away as well; BUT. Manufacturers need to realize that even after new agp interfaced cards stop flowing that they are still going to be in use. Heck, i still run into old PCI cards every once in a great great... ok great while. Basically what i'm getting at is driver support needs to continue developing and moving along for at least a few more years (Yes, i'm talking to you ATI!). If a driver version comes out which is not AGP compatable then it should be clearly labeled as such(Again, talking to ATI.) If you couldn't tell, i've finally left the world of ATI and am running nVidia. I've always had the upmost respect for both companies but ATI's recent AGP blunders really ticked me off... Tribute to the good ole AGP interface though, it did usher in a new erra of gaming for us all and will not be forgoten for a long time. I'm sure some of us could still get nastolgic thinking back to ISA even :p

Epsilon report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

AGP Express next?

Jun 05, 2008 09:15     

Just when you think your system is comfortably recent - they will come out with something else - like "AGP Express"... it never ends.
Bruce B. report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

AGP ani't dead

Jun 19, 2008 19:47     

I run both AGP and PCI-E based computers I haven't seen the difference between PCI-E and AGP as of yet. I keep hearing people and the media say that PCI-E is so much faster then AGP but yet when the benchmarks are run, there is no difference. Also, as for this SLI/Crossfire, AGP had that almost 8 years ago. What do you think AGP 3.0 means. It means that the AGP chipset can run two 8x AGP slots at the same time just like PCI-E.

Harry Cat report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2