ASRock Core 2 Duo: AGP/PCI Express Graphics Performance, Part Tres
by Gary Key on August 15, 2006 6:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Game Performance, Continued
In our two games that tend to be GPU limited we see the i865 AGP/DDR solution continuing the trend of offering the best graphics performance regardless of video card choice. On the VIA platform the AGP slot still provides better overall results than the PCI Express slot. The 6800 Ultra continues to offer a better gaming experience than the 7600GS at our settings mainly due to the memory speed running 300MHz higher on the 6800 Ultra. The sweet spot for gaming with the 7600 GS seems to be at 1280x1024 with the older games and at 1024x768 with the newer releases. The introduction of low antialiasing or antistrophic filtering settings at these two resolutions should still provide a decent gaming experience.
Final Words
Our results confirm that there is not a throughput performance penalty for using AGP over PCI Express on the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA. In fact, just the opposite is true in this case as our AGP graphics cards consistently scored better than their PCI-E counterparts. This is attributable to the PCI Express Graphics slot being limited to X4 operation at the upper resolutions and the slight overhead penalty incurred due to the VIA chipset design. However, the performance of the PCI Express slot is not that bad with the worst penalty being around 5% with our video cards. (Pairing the motherboard with a top end GPU results in performance that can be up to 10% slower in certain applications than competing motherboards.) If you have either an AGP or midrange PCI Express card then this board will handle both in a more than acceptable manner with today's applications.
The overall performance of the ASRock 775i65G board still surprised us, even though we already knew it was just as competitive with the other chipsets from our previous testing. It proved itself once again to be extremely stable with every benchmark or application we threw at it. If you still have a high performance AGP 8X video card and DDR memory then this board would make an incredible "budget" system with the addition of an E6300 or E6400 Core 2 Duo processor. The same holds true for the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA board which also allows you to use a current PCI Express video card at a small performance penalty and DDR2 memory which improves performance slightly over DDR-400.
If gaming is your priority then we still suggest upgrading your entire platform at this time as the top games being introduced over the next six months are just going to put additional demands on even the latest hardware. There are quite a few attractive midrange GPU offerings now available. If you happen to need a good second computer or utilize your system mainly for media encoding or general applications then either board allows you to extend your current component investment while realizing a CPU performance increase, especially when compared with older Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 systems. In the end, this might just be the most important reason to consider either board.
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In our two games that tend to be GPU limited we see the i865 AGP/DDR solution continuing the trend of offering the best graphics performance regardless of video card choice. On the VIA platform the AGP slot still provides better overall results than the PCI Express slot. The 6800 Ultra continues to offer a better gaming experience than the 7600GS at our settings mainly due to the memory speed running 300MHz higher on the 6800 Ultra. The sweet spot for gaming with the 7600 GS seems to be at 1280x1024 with the older games and at 1024x768 with the newer releases. The introduction of low antialiasing or antistrophic filtering settings at these two resolutions should still provide a decent gaming experience.
Final Words
Our results confirm that there is not a throughput performance penalty for using AGP over PCI Express on the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA. In fact, just the opposite is true in this case as our AGP graphics cards consistently scored better than their PCI-E counterparts. This is attributable to the PCI Express Graphics slot being limited to X4 operation at the upper resolutions and the slight overhead penalty incurred due to the VIA chipset design. However, the performance of the PCI Express slot is not that bad with the worst penalty being around 5% with our video cards. (Pairing the motherboard with a top end GPU results in performance that can be up to 10% slower in certain applications than competing motherboards.) If you have either an AGP or midrange PCI Express card then this board will handle both in a more than acceptable manner with today's applications.
The overall performance of the ASRock 775i65G board still surprised us, even though we already knew it was just as competitive with the other chipsets from our previous testing. It proved itself once again to be extremely stable with every benchmark or application we threw at it. If you still have a high performance AGP 8X video card and DDR memory then this board would make an incredible "budget" system with the addition of an E6300 or E6400 Core 2 Duo processor. The same holds true for the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA board which also allows you to use a current PCI Express video card at a small performance penalty and DDR2 memory which improves performance slightly over DDR-400.
If gaming is your priority then we still suggest upgrading your entire platform at this time as the top games being introduced over the next six months are just going to put additional demands on even the latest hardware. There are quite a few attractive midrange GPU offerings now available. If you happen to need a good second computer or utilize your system mainly for media encoding or general applications then either board allows you to extend your current component investment while realizing a CPU performance increase, especially when compared with older Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 systems. In the end, this might just be the most important reason to consider either board.
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atlr - Thursday, January 25, 2007 - link
Has anyone compared the performance of agp and pci-e versions of the x1950pro on the Asrock Dual-VSTA?I am wondering if the 4x PCI-E on the Asrock will be a noticeable bottleneck with a GPU faster than the 6800Ultra.
mongo lloyd - Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - link
Does anyone know of a board similar to the i865PE-based Asrock board, released or upcoming, that basically has the same features only with gigabit LAN? Intel CSA preferred, but even gigabit hanging off the PCI bus would be better than the 10/100 crap. It's a must for me, and such a board would make an upgrade really desirable.hibachirat - Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - link
I think you'll have a hard time finding an AGP & DDR intel Conroe supporting mobo with built-in gigabit LAN. mATX too? No hope, but you could get one of these and then add an ethernet card like we used to do in times of yore.Sc4freak - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link
"Three" in French is "trois". "Tres" means "very"."ASRock Core 2 Duo: AGP/PCI Express Graphics Performance, Part Very" :p
Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix.
Gary Key - Sunday, August 20, 2006 - link
I know French, Tres is three in Spanish and hence the change up for our Spanish speaking friends. :)
lapierrem - Thursday, August 17, 2006 - link
I find it very amusing to see that AGP cards can still beat a PCI-e card which is supposed to be so much faster and better in many respects, but apparently isn't. I know on the other Asrock boards, like the 939DualSata2 the AGP is bridged off the PCI-E bus and is supposed to be slower, but wow. Maybe if we had gone with dual AGP cards for SLI we woulda had the real dealCrappyLuckMan - Thursday, August 17, 2006 - link
Anandtrash buys ascrock stock and bans me. Yey no more n00bs.CrappyLuckMan - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link
In all the asrock tests it's the Asrock that's a bottleneck. I believe the best way to bench is use a card that comes in both flavors and run it on an NF4 w/AM2 DDR-2 and one in an NF4 agp mobo with DDR. You test ram and video card this way at the same time on the same chipset and same cpu with same cache and same speed. Only difference is one is ddr-2 and has an extra pin.And from my experience with Asrock boards is that they die for no reason and wont boot no matter what you do after a while. You get what you pay for and I can't believe how much attention you are giving this cheapo mobo.
hibachirat - Friday, August 18, 2006 - link
Too bad your experience was negative, but I have had top of the line ASUS and AOPEN boards that were junk fresh out of the box. And problematic top of the line boards from MSI and Abit. Also had great boards from the same makers. Now I'm running some "cheap" boards from Asrock and Biostar that are rock solid. The difference between the high end and low end boards has more to do with cutting edge feature sets and fractional performance gains than it does with stability and longevity. Asrock may be soft-rock to the T-O-L boards heavy metal, but that suits some of us just fine.CrappyLuckMan - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link
Well then again I see on newegg a lot of people use junk ram and or crappy psu's and call the mobo junk cause it doesn't post. Even if the asrock posts and doesn't die in a year, I still think it is a bottleneck and it shouldn't be used to compare agp vs pci x16.