Over at Tom’s Hardware, a new set of tests was done to compare the performance of a Powercolor 3850 AGP video card versus the PCIe equivalent.

Well, guess what - virtually no difference in performance. This simply proves that for most people - that is, all who are not gamers - AGP is perfectly fine as a video interface.

What does this tell about the systems out there, being ‘junked‘ for the fact that the machine is locked into a certain processor. When I first was reading about this, I was thinking specifically of AMD, trying to claw its way out of a sea of red ink. Would it not be simple to use the technology already researched and paid for, to get massive amounts of dollars flowing into the coffers? In particular, I’m thinking of all the Socket 939 motherboards out there that have single core processors in them, usually the older processors, too, which could benefit from both more speed and another core. In like manner, using smaller process size would probably allow Athlon XPs with ratings up to 4000 or so. Can you imagine the bump in productivity by using a Barton process Athlon 4000XP to replace an  2400XP Thoroughbred? (So what if the board would require a BIOS update, make that part of the package, at a very attractive price) By ramping up the lines to turn out another run or two of dual core Athlon64s the company saves machines from the scrap heap, or recycler. Recycling may be good, but better still is keeping something running and out of any destructive process.

The astute out there will say that it is not easy to change a line, or having two products running from one line is impossible. What better time to expand, first by contacting previous partners to help. IBM and Via would probably love to get in on this!

If more thought was given to extending the life of products, instead of constant turnover, Mother Earth would be much happier, and we might not be putting nearly as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with various manufacturing processes.

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Technorati Tags: green - energy efficient - upgrading - increasing useful life - AMD - Athlon XP - Athlon64 - Socket 939 - carbon dioxide emissions - AGP - PCIe - gaming concerns

[tags] green, energy efficient, upgrading, increasing useful life, AMD, Athlon XP, Athlon64, Socket 939, carbon dioxide emissions, AGP, PCIe, gaming concerns [/tags]