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AGP - ACCELERATED GRAPHICS PORT
How is knowing about AGP going to help ME?
Like I have told you in the RAM page, the AGP speed (in MHz) is governed by a divisor of the FSB and multiplied by a factor of 2. Thus any overclock in FSB will undoubtedly affect the speed of the AGP bus. Once you mess with this a little you will learn it's quite easy to keep things in 'spec' to avoid damaging any components. Simply keep the PCI bus at 33 MHz (3) to stay out of trouble.
There are a few options in the bios pertaining to AGP function. One of them is a choice of whether you use a PCI video card or an AGP video card as the default. Another is the amount of SYSTEM RAM (or DDR in most cases) the AGP bus can transfer data to and from if it needs it. The other few options have to do with Video card voltages and offsets which I don't want to get into as they are very specific to particular motherboards and video card combinations.
PCI vs AGP -why and how?
Firstly we're not talking about the option in the bios that asks you which video card you want to see things off in the first minute of booting ... we're talking specifications ...
A PCI video card will run at 1/2 the speed of an AGP 2x card, and older motherboards will not have an AGP slot - that's going back several years. AGP required a greater voltage and has had 3 revisions since it's original incorporation onto motherboards. AGP 1 supports 1x/2x and is the first size/amount (not speed) of data that can be transferred between the AGP card and the system memory (AGP-RAM frequency). In this case the 1x is actually 33MHz and the 2x is actually 66 MHz. AGP 2 supporting 4x is four times the speed of the original AGP specification and PCI bus. AGP 3 supporting up to 8x will give up to a theoretical 2100MB (or 2.1GB per second) data throughput to the SYSTEM RAM (called SWAPPING). You can read a lot more ABOUT AGP STANDARDS by clicking the blue hyperlink.
If you didn't get lost then here's some more technica for you:
AGP 8x is currently not going to be of any use to you until a video editing tool and a graphics card that allows TRUE 8x data bandwidth to occur. If you don't have DDR 333 (PC2700) RAM installed and running at 333 FSB then you will never get the most benefit from the 8x motherboard and card that you have paid so much for. DDR 266 will give some advantage but if you want to maximise the potential of your system, you're gonna need a 333FSB before you do anything else. So, different specifications mean different voltages, bandwidth performance and rendering power. If you are buying a mobo and want some 'FUTUREPROOFING' then AGP8x is the way to go.
HOWEVER!!!!
IF you are wanting the finest a motherboard can offer, you have to look no further than the emerging technology that is PCI EXPRESS!
PCI Express products are due to ship in the July (or later) 2004 and data speeds reach 4GB/second with a PCI express starting rate at 16x PCI spec. Reportedly it has "a lot of features software can take advantage of".
Overclocking an AGP Video Card
The premise of overclocking implies frequency and MHz, and voltage. An AGP card has two frequency values. The CORE frequency and the MEMORY frequency. Both of these on their own should result in a performance increase, however the BEST performance on ATI graphics cards can be gained by synchronously overclocking the core and the mem frequencies. You will need programs or bios *.bin file flashes to overclock a video card. Some manufacturers of video cards/motherboards will supply such a driver/device for you, such as ASUS or MSI
Here's some links to specialised programs for overclocking a video card: Geforce Tweak Utility
Riva Tuner
Radeonator
Power Strip- and this one has MY RECOMMENDATION!
Matrox Cards
3dfx and Voodoo
Drivers can be obtained HERE for REAL QUALITY - This guy is a real CHAMP!
And a host of BIOS information HERE
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