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What's the deal with AGP anyway? I read that the only thing about it is it allows access to system memory for video memory usage.. And this has proved to be mostly useless.
So is it true AGP is just a glorified PCI slot modified so that we'd have to upgrade our motherboards, or is it actually much better than PCI ?
Just wondering.
coolfish
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NO, AGP is not a glorified PCI slot. It's much more than that.
The AGP slot has direct pipelines not only to system memory but to the mainboards chipset. This has profound implications.
With AGP this is an uncontested 533 mb/s pipeline. With PCI a graphics card has to compete for its share of the 132 mb/s PCI bus with all the other cards on the system, including the drive interfaces. As such AGP graphics performance is faster and more consistant.
Even with few PCI cards on the system a 3D graphics card has to follow a circuitous route to process a texture map where with AGP the data path is much simpler and faster.
To see some graphic representations of this and get more info check these pages on Intels AGP technology pages;
PCI graphics: http://developer.intel.com/technolog...al/chapt_1.htm
AGP graphics: http://developer.intel.com/technolog...al/chapt_2.htm
AGP workings: http://developer.intel.com/technolog...al/chapt_3.htm
Dr. Mordrid
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Get ready for AGP 8X
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