A lot has changed since AGP cards ruled the graphics market; DDR2 wrestled its way to the top as the new memory standard, NVIDIA released a handful of new chipsets, and Intel and AMD both came out with new platforms and processors. To effectively make the comparison between PCI Express and AGP as accurate as possible, we chose to use components with the smallest generation gap. The end result was two completely different test systems; one for PCI Express and another for AGP.

PCI Express Platform

• motherboard: ASUS A8N32-SLI (chipset nVIDIA nForce 4 SLI, Socket 939)
• processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Socket 939
• memory: Corsair CMX1024-3500LLPRO, 2x1 Gbyte
• PSU: Tagan TG480

AGP Platform

• motherboard: GIGABYTE K8NS-939 (chipset nVIDIA nForce 3 Ultra, Socket 939)
• processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Socket 939
• memory: Corsair CMX1024-3500LLPRO, 2x1 Gbyte
• PSU: Tagan TG480

Video cards tested:

• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT AGP (350-1000-256)
• ATI Radeon 9800XT AGP (412-730-256M)
• Sapphire Radeon X1950PRO AGP (580-1400-512M)
• HIS Radeon X1950PRO AGP (620-1485-256M)
• ATI Radeon X1950PRO (575-1360-256M)
• HIS Radeon X1950PRO (620-1485-256M)
• ATI Radeon X1650 XT (575-1350-256M)
• ATI Radeon X850XT (520-1080-256M)
• NVIDIA GeForce 7900GS (450-1320-256M)
• NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT (560-1400-256M)