AGP FAQ
What is AGP?
-AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) is a new bus architecture for 3D graphics. The AGP slot eliminates the PCI bandwidth bottleneck by bypassing the PCI interface and accessing the system memory directly. Currently, the AGP supports 1X and 2X modes, which yield bandwidths of 264 MB/s (at 33MHz bus speed) and 533MB/s (at 66MHz bus speed). Compare this with the mere 132 MB/s (at 33MHz bus speed) that you get with the PCI bus.

Does my operating system support AGP ?
-Currently, only Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0 will have built-in support for AGP. Some AGP cards require Windows 95 OSR2.1 or a special driver from Intel. Please check with your graphics vendor for more details.

What are the benefits of AGP?
-Here are some benefits of having AGP:
Reduction of PCI bus congestion - AGP operates along-side with, yet independently from most PCI transactions. Memory access by the AGP graphics controller can occur concurrently with system memory access by the CPU.

Higher bandwidth - AGP is sideband addressing, pipelining, and data transfers (occurring on the rise/fall edges of the clock) result in a peak bandwidth four times that of the PCI bus.

Direct access to system memory - AGP eliminates the need to pre-load texture data into local video memory. Instead, AGP enables high-speed direct execution of texture maps using the system memory.


Why doesn't my Diamond AGP FireGL 1000 work on my BX motherboard?
-Diamond has re-issued an older BIOS for this AGP card. If you are using version 1.41 of the Diamond FireGL 1000 BIOS, contact Diamond and request the older 1.36 BIOS replacement. In addition, some users of Windows 95 may experience AGP-PCI conflicts, however, this is an issue with Windows 95. Windows 98 fixes this problem. This conflict should not affect performance or stability.

If downgrading the FireGL 1000 BIOS is not an option, the "Text Setup" version of the AMI BIOS for your particular board may fix the problem. Availability for your particular board may vary so please check the "BIOS download" page for more information.