PCI Express

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Aloha,
Can anyone offer some advice regarding the new PCI express graphics cards, not been near the hardware pages for erm...2 months and already it's all change. Is a budget ie £70 PCI express graphics card as good as a decent AGP one?
Also what is the difference other than speed of ddr1 & 2 RAM? Is DDR2 considerably more expensive? And just for good measure with the new Intel skt 775 CPU's what gives with the 5x and 6 x series? Is a P4 skt 775 3.0Ghz faster than a P4 skt 478 3.0Ghz prescott?
In the process of building a PC with a budget of approx £850, I get the impression buying a PCI express mobo with skt 775 should ensure better future proofing?
Any advice most gratefully recieved.

 

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Right not sure where to start with all those questions

the AGP/PCI-E difference is insignificant for the most part at present, its purely an interface change, a 6800 Ultra PCI-E and a 6800 Ultra AGP will perform almost identical
a 70 PCI-E card is budget, and will perform as such


the new numbering shcheme is the move towards performance based marking, what with the advent of dual core processors, increased cache, and the final realisation that cpu speed is not the be all and end all

a 775 is however, better future proofing, if u get the right chipset u will have PCI-E, DDR2, and the possibility of 64bit memory enhancements

DDR2 is actually a bit slower than the more mature low latency DDR, but it has higher bandwidth, so its all a toss up
it is however a fair bit more pricey at present

 

Cheers for the input Phoenix, I read that PCI-E graphics cards have double the bandwith of an AGP slot, surely this must mean it's a good bit quicker?
I think the mobo I will go for has 2 DDR1 & 2 DDR2 slots although this limits the max RAM the board will host at 2GB. I have noticed the selection of mobo's supporting Skt 775 and PCI-E seem kinda limited, anyone recommend a decent one (£80) approx.

 

limited?
ive found theres limited 478 ones out there these days

whilst PCI-E does improve the bandwidth, my point was it will pose limited improvement for current generation graphics cards

 

Haha, sorry Phoenix, you sure know more about it than me. I think I will go for the budget PCI-E graphics card, it is only going to be a web-surfer after all. I read somewhere that the PCI-E interface is rapidly making AGP obsolete. That kinda talk makes me panic.

 

put it this way
i just shelled out 300 quid for a new AGP graphics card
to move to PCI-E would require me replacing my mobo, processor, memory, and the graphics card, something I wasn't really willing to do

AGP will and is dieing out, most new boards dont have it, most graphics vendors have a much larger PCI-E line up these days, but its not gone just yet

a new system would obviously want to take advantage of PCI-E though
although see if u can get a DDR1 board rather than DDR2

check out overclockers.co.uk
they have a very wide range of socket 775 boards last time i checked