AGPväylien

AGPväylien is a term that refers to the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) bus, a legacy computer expansion bus standard designed for attaching a graphics card to a motherboard. Introduced by Intel in 1997, AGP was developed to address the limitations of the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus for graphics-intensive applications. Unlike PCI, which shares bandwidth with other expansion cards, AGP provided a dedicated high-speed connection between the graphics processor and the system memory.

The AGP bus operated at higher clock speeds than PCI and offered several improvements, including a faster transfer rate and the ability to access system RAM directly for textures and other graphics data, a feature known as "Sideband Addressing." This direct memory access significantly reduced latency and improved overall graphics performance. AGP also introduced concepts like "AGP Texturing" and "Fast Writes" to further accelerate graphics rendering.

Over time, AGP evolved through different versions, with AGP 1x, 2x, 4x, and 8x denoting increasing transfer speeds. However, the advent of PCI Express (PCIe), a more flexible and scalable serial interface, gradually led to the decline of AGP. PCIe offered superior bandwidth and a more efficient architecture, eventually becoming the standard for graphics card connectivity. While AGP was a significant step forward in its time, it has largely been replaced by PCIe in modern computer systems.