Accelerated Graphics Port

what is AGP?

AGP full form is Accelerated Graphics Port. This port is most commonly used for connecting the video card to the computer processor and memory. With this connection, they can achieve faster and improved graphics while playing a video game. The video card that is connected to the computer is nothing but the graphics card that helps the computer in generate video images. This type of card is used because the players often play the game where the graphics are advanced as these cards are capable of providing such graphics. Every graphic card consists of its own processors Lluing these processors high-resolution video images can be produced. The quality of each image is much higher than the quality of the images that are obtained by a standard graphics chip that relies on the CPU for processing the output. Hence such graphic cards are installed on the motherboard of a PC through the AGP slots. These slots receive the data from the graphic stream later this data will be processed and sent to the CPU.

 

 

History of AGP

     The AGP was developed by Intel in the year of 1996 and was launched in Socket 7 Intel P5 Pentium and Slot 1 P6 Pentium II processors. Actually, AGP full form is Accelerated Graphics Port. Gradually everyone started using it and the Chipsets like VIA Apollo VP3, SiS 5591/5592, and the ALI Aladdin V were the first Socket 7 chipsets to support the AGP.

    Early AGP boards are used graphics processors built around Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) and were simply bridged to AGP. It said that the AGP was built from the PCI that PCI is the base. The Bridging didn’t help the cards benefit much from the new bus except for the increased 66 MHz bus clock and the doubled bandwidth over PCI.  

 The AGP space originally showed up on x86-viable framework sheets in light of Socket 7 Intel P5 Pentium and Slot 1 P6 Pentium II processors. Intel presented AGP support with the i440LX Slot 1 chipset on August 26, 1997, and a surge of items followed from all the significant framework board sellers.

    

    The primary Socket 7 chipsets to help AGP were the VIA Apollo VP3, SiS 5591/5592, and the ALI Aladdin V. Intel never delivered an AGP-prepared Socket 7 chipset. FIC showed the primary Socket 7 AGP framework board in November 1997 as the FIC PA-2012 in light of the VIA Apollo VP3 chipset, followed rapidly by the EPoX P55-VP3 additionally founded on the VIA VP3 chipset which was first to showcase.

    Early video chipsets highlighting AGP support incorporated the Rendition Vérité V2200, 3dfx Voodoo Banshee, Nvidia RIVA 128, 3Dlabs PRIMEDIA 2, Intel i740, ATI Rage series, Matrox Millennium II, and S3 ViRGE GX/2. Some early AGP sheets utilized designs processors that worked around PCI and were basically connected to AGP. This brought about the cards helping little from the new transport, with the main improvement utilized being the 66 MHz transport clock, with its subsequent multiplied data transmission over PCI, and transport selectiveness. Instances of such cards were the Voodoo Banshee, Vérité V2200, Millennium II, and S3 ViRGE GX/2. Intel’s i740 was unequivocally intended to take advantage of the new AGP highlight set; as a matter of fact, it was intended to surface just from AGP memory, making PCI forms of the board challenging to carry out (nearby board RAM needed to imitate AGP memory.)

    Microsoft previously brought AGP support into Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2 adaptation 1111 or 950B) through the USB SUPPLEMENT to OSR2 fix. In the wake of applying the fix, the Windows 95 framework became Windows 95 from 4.00.950 B. The primary Windows NT-based working framework to get AGP support was Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3, presented in 1997. Linux support for AGP improved quick information moves was first added in 1999 with the execution of the AGPgart piece module.

 

Features of AGP Slots

 The features of an AGP improved its performance when compared to a PCL These features are nothing the advancements that are made to AGP design ever since it was invented. The advancements are

 

(i) Pipelining

GAGP slots This feature of an AGP slot allows it to receive the instructions as well as act upon those multiple instructions simultaneously in pipelining in computer architecture. This feature is absent in the PCT where it can either receive (or) act upon an instruction but not both. Hence this feature improves data transfer.

 

 ii) Side Band Addressing

This feature of the AGP slot allows placing some additional information along with the actual packet. This additional information is nothing but the information that specifies the system as to where the data should be used. This feature is also absent in POTS Hence it is a time-consuming process.

 

iii) Texture Maps Storage

This feature of AGP allows the system memory to store texture maps. This is not there in PCI as the storage is limited to the graphics card. Because of this high performance is obtained as the system memory provides large space and faster processing.