albatron anounces agp to pciE bridge card!

[saaya]

Albatron recently announced the world's first AGP-8x to PCI-Express bridge card. The "ATOP"(AGP-To-PCIe) bridge card will allow a user to use their existing AGP-8x VGA card in a mainboard designed for PCI-Express resulting in considerable savings in upgrade expenditures.

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=2202&s=1

nice!! might require a casemod, but nice!

[zakelwe]

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=2202&s=1

nice!! might require a casemod, but nice!

Hey excellent .. I do not want to stop benching all my old cards when I go PCIe or have to swap between boards !

Regards

Andy

[Leverpospade]

I hope it works property, and doesn't become as huge a failure as AGP express

[Nubius]

Hell yeah! I hope this thing does actually perform because this could be the PERFECT answer for me! Instead of waiting for the DFI Nf3 socket 939 AGP board I could just get this and a Ultra-D board

only thing is though like you said saaya seems like it might require some case moddage lol, and with my maze4 GPU on there, I might have to figure out a way to brace the damn thing =/

Nice find either way!

[Bloody_Sorcerer]

all i have to say is YES! ITS ABOUT TIME!!!

[austinbmxnig]

im dying to see how much this thing is

[sinsinking]

hm..
such a great product

[austinbmxnig]

and i think it is gonna be a big mother

[_Eduard_]

Great Will this allow for an SLI setup with 2 AGP cards?

[saFFyre]

I dont think so as the Cards need to be SLI compatable, which afaik no agp cards are.

[Revv23]

i wonder if theres a performance hit, hopefully its similar to nvidia's bridge meaning no real performance hit, id love to take my 9800pro onto an NF4 LP

[(sin)morpheus]

Yeah, this looks like it'll be great for playing around with old cards on newer boards. I would love to try my 8500le that has died and come back from the dead twice now on my new board when it comes.

[Mr. Tinker]

It may work with ATI Multi VPU since that should be enabled in even the AGP revisions. I could be wrong on that one.

My main questions is: Where does that VGA port get its input, and what chip is it using to convert to PCI? Will it only be compatible with Nvidia cards or maybe with only ATI cards? (not likely since pics has a nvidia card)

[ianocean]

BTW which is Albatron's url,i just tried www.albatron.com.tw-seems is down for me

[=[PULSAR]=]

Ahh the much cheaper AGP X850XT PE on a NF4 board

[saaya]

i think its based on nvidias bridge chip as albatron doesnt have ati cards afaik...
it should work with all cards though, and i dont think it will cost too much

and sli wont be possible as agp cards dont have the sli plug, and it wont work with atis multi vpu technology as thats done through the chipset mostly afaik, and i dont think they wont have an agp boards based on rd480...

[Rob94hawk]

I'll be impressed when I see that the thing actually works and gets reviewed on respectable websites.

[perkam]

They had a few special AGP slots on some pci-e based mobos when nf4 just came out and they stated an AGP card in anything less than a pure AGP slot will decrease the lifespan of the card, I predict the same will apply here.

Perkam

[SLaY3r07]

LOL, Albatron came out w/ an AGPE slot awhile back on the i915 IIRC.

[[XC] moddolicous]

wow, this is pretty cool. This will save people some money when they are upgrading.

[Mr. Tinker]

$20! That's sounds about right!

Press release; John McClure, DigiTimes.com [Tuesday 17 May 2005]


Albatron has developed an AGP-to-PCI-Express (PCIe) bridge card called the ATOP, which allows users to use an AGP 8x VGA card on a PCIe motherboard.

Consumers have been hesitant to upgrade to motherboards with the PCIe standard because it means needing to purchase a new expensive PCIe graphics card. The new solution with the ATOP bridge is currently only available for the Albatron AGP 8x 6200A low-profile card. According to a source at Albatron, the ATOP bridge will only add around US$20 to the current prices for AGP 8x cards.

The AGP 8x 6200A card piggybacks on the ATOP card's AGP 8x slot located on the top edge. The ATOP card is then plugged into the motherboard's PCIe slot.

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20050517PR205.html

[Mr. Tinker]

i dont think they wont have an agp boards based on rd480...

So you think they WILL have agp boards based on rd480? Even if they only have PCI-e boards based on rd480, it might not matter because this would be like MVP'ing a set of cards with on-board bridge chips. Then again for ATI cards the VPU to agp-bridge back to pci-bridge might mess things up.

[$a1Ty]

yeah that would be funny, use a native pci-e card which has a bridge chip to agp, then plug it in with this card to run on pci-e lmao

[saaya]

They had a few special AGP slots on some pci-e based mobos when nf4 just came out and they stated an AGP card in anything less than a pure AGP slot will decrease the lifespan of the card, I predict the same will apply here.

Perkam

those were agpX slots and have nothing to do with this perkam... you are making a statement without knowing what your talking about, come on, i know you can do better that that :P

the slots your talking about are using the pci protocol wich agp is based upon, they overclock the pci bus but the electrical and protocols are not 100% identical wich is why its a lot slower than agp and "eventually" decreases the lifespan of the cards.

So you think they WILL have agp boards based on rd480? Even if they only have PCI-e boards based on rd480, it might not matter because this would be like MVP'ing a set of cards with on-board bridge chips. Then again for ATI cards the VPU to agp-bridge back to pci-bridge might mess things up.

nono, i mean the will not, my bad, i had a lil feever last night and wrote some weird stuff ^^

yeah that would be funny, use a native pci-e card which has a bridge chip to agp, then plug it in with this card to run on pci-e lmao

LMAO! yeah thatd be funny!

[Frisch]

This is a translation i made, from a Danish site.

And here's the translation.

Albatron has enterd the market with the first AGP 8x to PCI Express adapter, which has been named ATOP.
The adapter makes it possible for people to upgrade for one of the new PCI Express motherboards, without investing in one of the new PCI graphic cards.

ATOP is mounted into the PCI Express slot, then you apply the AGP card into the adapter. All you have to do, is to remove the backplate, and mount the backplate that comes with the ATOP card.

There's no statement whether ATOP slows down the effect from the AGP card, you must assume that a loss in effect will appear, as a conversion is taking place.

Futher information, as to whether the height can course problems when it comes to the height of the cabinet, does not exist.

And here's the link to the Danish site
http://www.edbpriser.dk/Review.asp?ID=22444