PCI-E worth it?

[riotpb]

Sorry I know theres a lot of threads like this, but none of them have helped me get a straight forward answer.

Right now I have

P4 2ghz Processor 400mhz FSB
Intel Motherboard with an agp slot thats only 4x
ATI Radeon X800 256mb AGP
1gb ram

I'm looking to upgrade my motherboard and processor to an AMD 3500+
Would it be worth it to upgrade to PCI-E, or would AGP 8X give me enough of a performance boost to have real smooth gameplay. I've heard different things such as 8X and 4X have no noticable performance differences.

Right now ingame I average less than 15-20 FPS during fights, 25 FPS by myself.

Any help would be awesome

[[TEA]Vengeance]

Don't quote me on this but as far as I am aware the full bandwidth of AGP 8x isn't used. However PCI-E is good future-proofing.

[ChopperKill]

Yeah there's another thread on this with a long discussion about it here http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26168http://

PCI-e is the future but AGP isn't dead yet and won't be for at least 12-18 months. Current games don't come near the bandwidth offered by AGP 8X so the extra horsepower from PCI-e is not being used yet. I'm betting that Gears of War will be the first game to possibly show better results on PCI-e than AGP. If it will time will tell and by how much then who knows.

Basically you could stick to AGP for the next year or more and be fine and then switch to PCI-e on your next upgrade after this one. Or seeing as you are doing your mobo and CPU anyway, ditch the graphics card and do the whole thing.

[imported_bosx2]

on game convention they showed Unreal engine 3 (Unreal tournament 2007/Gears of war) running in max setting on a AGP card, and you know what? it was running fine with the bandwith agp provided

[ChopperKill]

on game convention they showed Unreal engine 3 (Unreal tournament 2007/Gears of war) running in max setting on a AGP card, and you know what? it was running fine with the bandwith agp provided

Then maybe even Unreal Engine 3 doesn't even come to close to using PCI-e or maybe it's just that game based on UE3. Maybe future UE3 games will use more. Who the hell knows. 1 things for sure it's gunna be a while before PCI-e is an absolute requirement.

[riotpb]

Awesome, thanks for the input guys.