ATI bridge chip on way

[Phantasm66]

There's no real confirmation so far, but it looks like ATI will release a bi-directional bridge chip, which can adapt a PCIe card to AGP and vice versa, allowing for PCIe and AGP cards to be made from similar silicon. This allows for some real savings: you can, for example, make an X700 as a native PCIe card, and then you just a need small and relatively cheap bridge chip to turn it into an AGP card.

 

[Astro]

So this bridge chip, is it something consumers could buy? Or is this something that ATi would primarily use? Just wondering if I could purchase a pci-express card, then get a bridge and use it in my agp slot mobo now, and when I upgrade, slip off the bridge and make it pci-express.

 

[Phantasm66]

No, it means that you can essentially use extremely similar manufacturing for both types of cards, saving lots of costs which can be passed to the consumer, i guess.

I do recall hearing about a device that could convert PCIe to AGP but I cannot concretely confirm this. I think it was only for nVidia cards, or it came with one. That is not what the article is about, though.

 

[Astro]

Oh ok, well I'm all for anything that will cut costs for the consumer. Well, anything except outsourcing, that is. Good move by ATi though.