
What is the Difference Between PCI and AGP?
I heard a technician ask someone these terms, but I do not know what they mean.
PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect, and is a local bus standard developed by Intel Corporation.
Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is an interface specification that enables 3-D graphics to display quickly on ordinary personal computers.
In the past, AGP has well out performed the PCI bus graphics cards, but that has all been being put to the test with PCI Express. Its really hard to find any comparisons between AGP and PCI Express cards, but I have my own opinion.
PCI tends to be less productive in high resolution graphics programs, especially graphics intensive games. AGP simply to date out performs PCI. However, PCI allows for more flexibility in placement when building your machine and since it is an Intel creation, has less problems integrating with your Intel based machine. Since I don't use many graphics intensive programs, I prefer to use PCI. If one PCI slot fails, just put it in another one, but you only have on AGP slot.
The basic difference between the two would simply be explained as that they use two different lanes of a highway.
AGP uses a direct lane to the processor. PCI on the other hand uses the normal backbone of computer applications to transfer data to the processor.