Good evening,

 

 

I've been working lately with some old AGP graphics cards, to see how well do I fare in a completely CPU bottleneck free platform, and where the processor clocks aren't as important as in other platforms.

 

Well, to my surprise, when submitting scores some of the cards I work with don't discrimine between 64 or 128bit bus widths.

 

On newer PCI Express cards this doesn't pose that much of a threat, but on AGP that memory bus width can (and does) affect performance quite a lot.

 

For instance, take this FX5200 submission I made:

 

http://www.hwbot.org/submission/2264760_artikbot_3dmark2001_se_geforce_fx_5200_7228_marks

 

I ran the card to the clocks that gave me the best performance (305/500 - 250 DDR).

 

Now look at, for instance, this submission here:

 

http://www.hwbot.org/submission/886061_student_3dmark2001_se_geforce_fx_5200_9711_marks

 

He gets more than 2000 points more, while running at remarkably lower clocks.

 

 

The only difference between our cards is the bus. He has a 128bit-wide bus while I run a 64-bit narrow bus.

 

What I mean is, there is no contest for 64bit card users if there are 128 bit versions, because with little effort, a 128 bit card can easily score a 30% more points than a 64bit one overclocked to hell and beyond.

 

 

 

Thanks for your understanding!

yeah, we always split the buses. but without pointing it out like you did we wouldn't have known it.

i'll look at it the next days.

Thanks a lot!

 

By the way, excellent results you got there on the AGP cards! I look at them with a telescope of how high they are