whats the difference between PCI and AGP?

[Battousai1]

whats the difference between PCI and AGP?

whats better S3 Savage 4 PCI 16 MB or S3 Savage AGP 16 MB?

would it be better to choose PCI instead of choosing AGP if my mobo's AGP slot is 2X? whats the difference between 2X AGP and 4X AGP? what will happen if I inserted 4X AGP card on a 2X AGP slot?

 

[Pederv]

PCI = 32bits @ 33MHz
AGP = 64bits @ 66MHz or is it 128bit @ 66MHz?

2X cards can comunicate with the motherboard at twice the normal bandwidth and of course 4X is four times.
4X cards are supposed to be backwards compatible to 2X slots.

 

[Battousai1]

would it be better to choose PCI instead of choosing AGP if my mobo's AGP slot is 2X?

 

[Bovinicus]

No, definitely not. At AGP2x your video card will still receive a dedicated amount of bandwidth that is 4x that of the total PCI bus bandwidth. PCI is a system bus, AGP is a port. This means that the PCI bus can handle multiple types of add in cards, while the AGP port can only accept video cards. Use the AGP video card.

 

[Athlon4all]

Go AGP anyway, just to save the PCI slot, but seriously though from a performance perspective, would Savage4 care weather it's AGP or PCI?

 

[AndyHui]

FAQ: What is the performance difference between AGP 1X, 2X and 4X?

FAQ: What is AGP- 1X, 2X, 4X, 8X, 1.0, 2.0?

In any case, you should always put a video on the AGP wherever possible. The data that goes to the video card normally chokes the PCI bus, and leaves no bandwidth room left over for anything else, such as sound cards, IDE, etc.

 

[Peter]

AGP is 32-bit at 66 MHz, with 1x, 2x or 4x transfer modes.

BUT: AGP transfers hardly ever happen, given the amount of RAM on modern graphics boards. In actual game situations - with an adequate card - the difference of AGP 1x to 4x can hardly be measured let alone be noticed. (History bit: AGP was meant to avoid piling up RAM on the graphics card, but that made sense only back then when graphics card RAM was both expensive and not really faster than main system RAM. Soon after, graphics card clocks went up and RAM prices went down, and there went the sense in doing AGP.

What actually makes PCI cards stand back in performance is allowed power consumption. AGP 2.0 allows WAY more than PCI, meaning that one just can't do high clocked graphics cards with lots of RAM in a PCI slot. The remaining few percent are the faster command transfer over the 66-MHz bus.

regards, Peter

 

[DAPUNISHER]

My bad, nothing to see here, move along....move along