AGP Graphics Slot. So What is the AGP Graphics Slot? Read Below So just what exactly is an AGP graphics slot? The initials ‘AGP’ are an abbreviation of the term ‘Accelerated Graphics Port’, which is the commonly used term for describing a specific point to point video card interface that is used to connect the card to your computer’s processor and memory. AGP: Accelerated Graphics Port AGP is an abbreviation of the 'Accelerated Graphics Port'. It was created and developed as a high-speed point-to-point channel for putting together a video card to a system of the computer, first and foremost to help out and support the acceleration of 3D computer graphics.
Short for accelerated graphics port, AGP is an advanced port designed for video cards and 3D accelerators. Developed by Intel and introduced in August 1997, AGP introduces a dedicated point-to-point channel that allows the graphics controller direct access to the system memory. Below is an illustration of what the AGP slot may look like on your motherboard.
The AGP channel is 32-bits wide and runs at 66 MHz, which is a total bandwidth of 266 MBps and much greater than the PCI bandwidth (up to 133 MBps). AGP also supports two optional faster modes, with a throughput of 533 MBps and 1.07 GBps. It also allows 3-D textures to be stored in main memory rather than video memory.
AGP is available in three different versions, the original AGP version mentioned above, AGP 2.0 that was introduced in May 1998, and AGP 3.0 (AGP 8x) that was introduced in November 2000. AGP 2.0 added 4x signaling and was capable of operating at 1.5V, and AGP 3.0 was capable of double the transfer speeds.
Where is AGP on the motherboard
Note
Today, AGP has been replaced by PCI Express.
A computer with AGP support has one AGP slot next to all other expansion slots or an onboard AGP video. If you needed more than one video card in the computer, you can have one AGP video card and one PCI video card or use a motherboard that supports SLI.
TipNot all operating systems support AGP because of limited or no driver support. For example, Windows 95 did not support AGP. To determine what version of Windows you have, see: How to determine the version of Windows on a computer.
What is AGP Pro?
AGP Pro is an AGP interface extension specification for advanced workstations. This specification delivers additional power to video cards, includes an extended connector, thermal envelope, mechanical specifications, I/O bracket, and motherboard layout requirements.
Related pages
AGP Aperture, AIMM, Bus, Computer acronyms, Expansion slot, Hardware terms, Motherboard terms, Video card terms
As fast and wide as the PCI bus was, there was one task that threatened to consume all its bandwidth: displaying graphics. Early in the era of the ISA bus, monitors were driven by simple Monochrome Display adapter (MDA) and Colour Graphics Array (CGA) cards. A CGA graphics display could show four colours (two bits of data) at 320 by 200 pixels screen resolution at 60Hz, which required 128,000 bits of data per screen, or just over 937 KBps. An XGA image at a 16-bit colour depth requires 1.5MB of data for every image, and at a vertical refresh rate of 75Hz, this amount of data is required 75 times each second. Thanks to modern graphics adapters, not all of this data has to be transferred across the expansion bus, but 3D imaging technology created new problems.
3D graphics have made it possible to model both fantastic and realistic worlds on-screen in enormous detail. Texture mapping and object hiding require huge amounts of data, and the graphics adapter needs to have fast access to this data to avoid the
AGP operates at the speed of the processor bus, now known as the frontside bus. At a clock rate of 66MHz this is double the PCI clock speed and means that the peak base throughput is 264 MBps.
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For graphics cards specifically designed to support it, AGP allows data to be sent during both the up and down clock cycle, doubling the clock rate to 133MHz and peak transfer to 528 MBps. This is known as 2x. To improve the length of time that AGP can maintain this peak transfer, the bus supports pipelining, which is another improvement over PCI. A pipelining 2x graphics card will be able to sustain throughput at 80% of the peak. AGP also supports queuing of up to 32 commands via a process called Sideband Addressing (SBA), the commands being sent while data is being received. This allows the bus to sustain peak performance for 95% of the time, according to Intel.
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AGP’s four-fold bandwidth improvement and graphics-only nature ensures that large transfers of 3D graphics data don’t slow up the action on screen; nor will graphics data transfers be interrupted by other PCI devices. Being primarily intended to boost 3D performance, AGP also provides other improvements that are specifically aimed at this function.
With its increased access speed to system memory over the PCI bus, AGP can use system memory as if it’s actually on the graphics card. This is called Direct Memory Execute (DIME). A device called a Graphics Aperture Remapping Table (GART) handles the RAM addresses so that they can be distributed in small chunks throughout system memory rather than hijacking one large section, and presents them to a DIME-enabled graphics card as if they’re part of on-board memory. The main use for DIME is to allow much larger textures to be used because the graphics card can have a much larger memory space in which to load the DRDRAM) in the second half of 1999. AGP 2.0 was supported by chipsets launched early in 1999 to provide support for Intel’s Katmai processor.
AGP Pro is a physical specification aimed at satisfying the needs of high-end graphics card manufacturers, who are currently limited by the maximum electrical power that can be drawn by an AGP card (about 25W). AGP Pro caters for cards that draw up to 100W, and will use a slightly longer AGP slot that will also take current AGP cards.