PCI or AGP??

ekhan · Jul 16, 2006

I've recently been thinking about upgrading my pc's videos card which is currently a NVIDIA VANTA 16MB AGP. My motherboard can only support 4x AGP cards so i dont know if it would be better if i buy a 128MB AGP card compatible with 4x or a PCI 128MB video card??

TheDoug · Jul 16, 2006

All other things being equal, you'll get better performance from AGP.

AGP slots are superior to PCI for graphics cards because they provide a dedicated pathway between the slot and the processor, allowing for faster communication between the two. In addition, AGP uses sideband addressing, meaning that addressing for packets is carried outside of the packet, meaning that the entire packet does not need to be read to get addressing information. In addition, to load a texture, a PCI graphics card must copy it from the system's RAM into the card's framebuffer. An AGP card is capable of reading textures directly from system RAM using the Graphics Address Remapping Table (GART). GART reapportions main memory for texture storage, allowing the graphics card to access them directly.

The two main reasons graphics cards with the PCI interface are produced is that first they can be used in nearly any PC, as very few modern desktop PCs do not have PCI slots - though some motherboards with built-in graphics adaptors lack an AGP slot. Second, a user with an appropriate operating system can use several PCI graphics cards (or several PCI graphics cards in combination with one AGP card) simultaneously - to give many different video outputs (for the use of many screens). This cannot be done with AGP cards, as very few (if any) motherboards are equipped with more than one AGP slot.
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ekhan · Jul 16, 2006

but my motherboard only supports up to 4x would tht still be as good as a pci?

viper_boy403 · Jul 16, 2006

agp is better than pci, pci-express is better than agp. 4x will bring agp down a little but not as far back as pci.

ekhan · Jul 16, 2006

is there a special slot for pci-express?? or can i just put it in my normal pci slot?

TheDoug · Jul 17, 2006

Totally different. PCI-e, like AGP, have their own special slot type.

viper_boy403 · Jul 17, 2006

the best card u can get for pci is an FX 5500, agp goes all the way up to a 7800gs. it depends on what you plan on doing and how much u want to or are willing to pay

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PCI or AGP??

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