Accelerated Graphics Port

The Accelerated Cartoon Port (often beneath to AGP) is a accelerated point-to-point approach for adhering a video agenda to a computer's motherboard, primarily to abetment in the dispatch of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express (PCIe). By mid-2009 PCIe cards bedeviled the market; AGP cards and motherboards were still produced, but OEM disciplinarian abutment was minimal.1

Advantages over PCI

As computers became increasingly graphically-oriented, successive generations of graphics adapters began to push the limits of PCI, a bus with shared bandwidth. This led to the development of AGP, a "bus" dedicated to graphics adapters.

The primary advantage of AGP over PCI is that it provides a dedicated pathway between the slot and the processor rather than sharing the PCI bus. In addition to a lack of contention for the bus, the direct connection allows for higher clock speeds. AGP also uses sideband addressing, meaning that the address and data buses are separated so the entire packet does not need to be read to get addressing information. This is done by adding eight extra 8-bit buses which allow the graphics controller to issue new AGP requests and commands at the same time with other AGP data flowing via the main 32 address/data (AD) lines. This results in improved overall AGP data throughput.

In addition, to load a texture, a PCI graphics card must copy it from the system's RAM into the card's framebuffer, whereas an AGP card is capable of reading textures directly from system RAM using the graphics address remapping table, which reapportions main memory as needed for texture storage, allowing the graphics card to access them directly.2 The maximum amount of system memory available to AGP is defined as the AGP aperture

AGP Pro

It is an official addendum for cards that appropriate added electrical power. It is a best aperture with added pins for that purpose. AGP Pro cards were usually workstation-class cards acclimated to advance able computer-aided architectonics applications active in the fields of architecture, machining, engineering, simulations, and agnate fields.

Power consumption

Actual ability supplied by an AGP aperture depends aloft the agenda used. The best accepted fatigued from the assorted balustrade is accustomed in the blueprint for the assorted versions. For example, if best accepted is fatigued from all food and all voltages are at their defined high limits,8 an AGP 3.0 aperture can accumulation up to 48.25 watts;13 this amount can be acclimated to specify a ability accumulation conservatively, but in convenance a agenda is absurd anytime to draw added than 40 W from the slot, with abounding application less. AGP Pro provides added ability up to 110 W.14 Abounding AGP cards had added ability connectors to accumulation them with added ability than the aperture could provide.