dual agp

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
hi there people



with the heavy graphic requirments of os x do you think that apple will offer 2 agp slots to take advantage of quartz extreme on more than one or two monitors?



i've read else where that artists and graphics guys routinly have two or three monitors. it would be a shame to limit quartz extreme only to agp .



of course i'm assuming that the advatages of quartz 2 will appeal to the graphics set enough to warrent the extra agp slot.



aaron



[ 05-19-2002: Message edited by: xram ]</p>

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    [quote]Originally posted by xram:

    <strong>hi there people



    with the heavy graphic requirments of os x do you think that apple will offer 2 agp slots to take advantage of quartz extreme on more than one or two monitors?



    i've read else where that artists and graphics guys routinly have two or three monitors. it would be a shame to limit quartz extreme only to agp .



    of course i'm assuming that the advatages of quartz 2 will appeal to the graphics set enough to warrent the extra agp slot.



    aaron



    [ 05-19-2002: Message edited by: xram ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

    If my memory is good , it's not possible to have two AGP slot. AGP was not schedule for this. However, many graphics card have twinview technologie, and i bet there are powerfull enough to accelerate both screens.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    [quote]Originally posted by powerdoc:

    <strong>

    If my memory is good , it's not possible to have two AGP slot. AGP was not schedule for this. However, many graphics card have twinview technologie, and i bet there are powerfull enough to accelerate both screens.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Basically what I said over in the other thread...this one should probably be locked/deleted. Where's a mod when you need one.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    OS 10.2 seems to still run fine, as it is now, on a PCI bus-powered GPU.



    (keep in mind this COULD be a rumor.not)



    -walloo
  • Reply 4 of 6
    woozlewoozle Posts: 64member
    AGP is a point to point connection, rather than a bus like PCI.

    However there is no reason that you couldnt build a chipset with two AGP connections.

    It would require twice as many pins as a single connection, and hence be more expensive.

    For the same price ( in extra pins ) you could probably look at putting in a second memory bus ( as some chipsets do ) which would be much more useful to more people.

    Hence, 2 AGP slots just isnt going to happen, because it is of limited appeal for the price.

    ATI's MAX technology has an AGP bridge chip, it splits the AGP slot into 2, so that each video chip on the card can operate, they even appear as independant cards as far as windows ( 2k ) is concerned.



    However, although they say QE requires AGP, I dont think that in reality that is a 'true' constraint. I think that it is simple used as a way to tell people not to bother trying on their old, tired ATI Rage. If that expectation wasnt set, then there are a lot of users who would be very pissed of when QE ran slower on their machine than Quartz.

    AGP is a customised PCI slot, notice that all the AGP graphics cards out there are PCI compatible? All of those chips can run on 66 mhz PCI slots, and some of them may even support 64 bit.

    4x PCI isnt too shabby, the same as 2x AGP.



    So, I expect that current ( Radeon 7000 PCI ) cards will be able to accelerate QE, and future cards will be even better ( more RAM ). The real problem is sourcing those cards, machines without AGP ( and hence needing PCI are becoming rarer and rarer ).



    My hope is that Apple can get nVidia to bring their nForce chipset across to the Mac, and modify it so that installing an AGP card does not disable the internal video ( in effect 2 AGP slots ).
  • Reply 5 of 6
    meme Posts: 5member
    I could see the value in Apple making a system with two AGP slots. The total market demand may be too small though. Depending on how serious, and how quickly Apple wants to take the Hollywood market could bias a decision for it however.



    It's not uncommon for creative arts professionals to use two or more screens. FCP alone could justify it for some. Add Maya to that, and an audio app or two...



    Time will tell.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    razzfazzrazzfazz Posts: 728member
    [quote]Originally posted by woozle:

    <strong>AGP is a point to point connection, rather than a bus like PCI.

    However there is no reason that you couldnt build a chipset with two AGP connections.

    It would require twice as many pins as a single connection, and hence be more expensive.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    It's a lot more complicated then just adding in some pins a duplicating some circuitry.

    At the very least, you'd also have to provide arbitration mechanisms so both ports don't interfere with each other, and it might be very tricky to get things like DiME and GART to work with more than one port.





    [quote]<strong>ATI's MAX technology has an AGP bridge chip, it splits the AGP slot into 2, so that each video chip on the card can operate, they even appear as independant cards as far as windows ( 2k ) is concerned.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Not sure, but maybe there's a reason ATi have pretty much given up on the whole "MAXX" concept?

    (Besides, if W2k really sees a Fury MAXX as 2 individual Rage128 cards, how do they do the scan line interleaving? I'd imagine it would have to appear as a single entity to games and 3D apps for that to work (i.e. to see any benefits from a MAXX setup when running one game / app at a time).



    [quote]<strong>

    AGP is a customised PCI slot, notice that all the AGP graphics cards out there are PCI compatible? All of those chips can run on 66 mhz PCI slots, and some of them may even support 64 bit.

    4x PCI isnt too shabby, the same as 2x AGP.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    While the peak transfer rates are close to each other, there are quite some differences between PCI64/66 and AGP2x: AGP has separate lines for addresses and data, whereas PCI multiplexes both, which saves pins but obviously limits throughput. Also (and I imagine this is the key factor in regards to QE) AGP allows the graphics chip to directly access main memory, whereas PCI does not provide such features.

    It's true that the first AGP cards available were just PCI cards "in disguise", but today, that's not true any more. Since AGP is a superset of PCI, you can in theory run an AGP chip off a PCI bus, but you give up access to all of AGP's advanced features in doing so.





    [quote]<strong>My hope is that Apple can get nVidia to bring their nForce chipset across to the Mac, and modify it so that installing an AGP card does not disable the internal video ( in effect 2 AGP slots ).</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I suggest just using a dual-headed card instead.



    The nForce really hasn't lived up to its (probably over-hyped) expectations, and there have even been some severe data integrity issues concerning its integrated IDE controller.



    Bye,

    RazzFazz
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