PCI or AGP???

[cad@sggsa]

Good day All

Which is beter for VectorWorks? PCI or AGP?

I have been reading an article on AGP and PCI.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/agp.htm

It tells me that AGP is beter for 3D graphics rendering.

If this is so why are we still running PCI bus ports with VectorWorks?

But on here I also read that VW only use Video Cards for OpenGL....

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=125484&Searchpage=1&Main=26124&Words=graphics+card&Search=true#Post125484

That brings me to my next question.

What is the difference between a Graphics and a Video Card? Or is it just another name for the same thing?

Thirdly.

Which card would be recommended on AGP for VW?

Thank you in advance for any advice or comments.

[islandmon]

AGP is a high bandwidth port dedicated to only serving high end graphics cards.

PCI is just the standard slot for various networking cards, etc.

Accelerated Graphics Port Bus

The AGP bus is an enhanced PCI bus with extra functionality to burst texture data and other graphics across the port up to 8 times faster than a 66 MHz PCI port.

AGP enables deeply pipelined memory read and write operations and demultiplexing of address and data on the bus.

There is also the more recent option for PCI-X videocards.

[cad@sggsa]

Thank you for explaining what the AGP is compared to PCI,

But this does not answer my Questions.

#1.Which is beter for VectorWorks? PCI or AGP?

#2.What is the difference between a Graphics and a Video Card? Or is it just another name for the same thing?

#3.Which card would be recommended on AGP for VW?

#4.are you able to use AGP in a PCI slot OR PCI in AGP?

Regards.

[Ray Libby]

1. AGP (assuming you are NOT talking about PCI express)

2. Same thing.

3. I buy NVidia cards in the $100 range, any recent card is good.

4. No No

[brudgers]

What you read on "How stuff works" is out of date by at least five years.

AGP was the prefered video interface when it was widely introduced in 1998. It replaced conventional PCI (which replaced ISA, MCA, and VLB...etc.)

For practical purposes, when it comes to graphics cards it has been wholely replaced by PCI-e..

To the point that today when you see "PCI" in connection with anything other than a legacy graphics card, it means PCI-e not conventional PCI.

I doubt you'ld even be able to find a new computer sporting AGP.

Given the potential age of your machine you could have either interface (or both) available...but AGP is less likely.

Edited July 16, 2009 by brudgers

[cad@sggsa]

Thank you all for clearing this up for me.

I was maybe hoping that if I change from my current PCI card to AGP it would improve the rendering in VW, but as it has been pointed out to me, that would not be feasible as the information I based this on is not current.

So no that, tah tis cleared up.....

I have been made an offer for a NVidia GeForce 8800 GT.

Would changing to this card give me so much more compared to my current NVidia GeForce 6800 GPU?

Ultimatly I know I should upgrade the whole PC to Quad Core.

Thank you again to all.

[brudgers]

As I said, the information on "how stuff works" is misleading. It's comparing conventional PCI cards to AGP cards. If such a comparison were relevant today, then it would be PCI-e to AGP.

If you have a PCI card based on the GeForce 6800, then it's PCI-e and on a faster bus than AGP.

I don't believe there is a conventional PCI card based on that GPU. They're all either PCI-e or AGP.

The GPU only affects rendering under OpenGL. So a faster card will only help you in that mode.

For other modes processor speed, cores, cache, and Ram are the determining factors.

[G_Hannigan]

If your current card is an AGP version, you cannot switch to a PCIe card - it will not fit into the connection. Apparently there were both versions of produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geforce_6800

"Like all of Nvidia's GPUs up until 2004, initial 6800 members were designed for the AGP bus. Nvidia added support for the PCI Express (PCIe) bus in later GeForce 6 products, usually by use of an AGP-PCIe bridge chip."

"The use of a bridge chip allowed Nvidia to release a full complement of PCIe graphics cards without having to redesign them for the PCIe interface. Later, when Nvidia's GPUs were designed to use PCIe natively, the bidirectional bridge chip allowed them to be used in AGP cards."

[cad@sggsa]

Thank you for your input and information

My NVidia GeForce 6800 series GPU is a PCI card. This is for the PC at work.

My personal PC at hame has the AGP.

For work I have now added more RAM to the setup, experiencing some problems where the PC freezes up on Startup etc. It has helped in that I can run more than two applications at the same time with out crashes or really slowing it down, but will need upgrade in the processor department for any speed differnce to show by the looks of it.

I must it is a world of knowledge in this little corner of the web.