What's the benefit of a PCI-E graphics card compared to AGP?

Question

Last time I built a PC was about 2 years ago, got to build a new one next week but now I notice I have the option of buying a PCI-E graphics card as well as the AGP cards I'm used to. What are the pros and cons of AGP vs PCI-E ? Thanks.

Answer 1

Speed.
http://www.directron.com/expressguide.html

Answer 2

AGP is a very dated bus (connection), it was replaced by PCI-E. I would recommend not using AGP at all if you can, but yes, you could plug an AGP card in while using the PCI-E slot. I assume your PCI-E slot is for your graphics card. You cannot however run two graphics cards at once this way if thats what your thinking, the only way to do that is by something called SLI or Crossfire. These are very expensive and more complex solutions for very modern computers.

Answer 3

First of all yes the bus is much faster "allows for a faster memory interface GDDR3, GDDR4," also PCI-E is what all DX10 cards will be on so USE IT! within the next year everyone will switch to DX10 gotta go!


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Answer 4

It's like the difference between a four lane and a sixteen lane highway. Cons? You can spend a lot of money on high end cards.

Answer 5

PCI-Express is 16x where as AGP is only 8x

Please refer to the following for ros and cons

http://www.cryosphere.f2s.com/articles/computers/PCI-Express-vs-AGP.html

Answer 6

pci-e is simply a newer and faster bus, you won't notice anything different than what you have with agp.

Answer 7

PCIE is a much faster bus. That means that the card can pump out images to the display much faster, making action games respond more quickly.