video cards

[pablito]

does the video card have to have the same type of memory as the pc? is there a difference between a pci video card and an agp
card.......besides the slot you install it in?

what other compatibilty issues are there?

[Kc2iLq]

AGP is faster than PCI and will prove to have higher performance when based on the same gpu. For this reason, most modern cards (almost ALL high-end cards) are only being manufactured in AGP. As for the memory, DDR is faster than SDRAM, and you can use a card with DDR on a mobo with SDRAM (or RDRAM) without a problem.

-Kc2iLq

[Nighthawk]

Video card memory has nothing to do with system memory. You can mix SDRAM, SGRAM, SDR/DDR etc and it won't do anything.

Like Kc2iLq said, the main non-physical difference between AGP and PCI is that AGP has more bandwidth and an AGP card will perform better than a similar PCI card.

[kaziah]

Yeah, you can kinda think of an AGP card as having it's own 'freeway' (more or less), instead of sharing the same '2-lane' PCI 'highway' with the rest of the PCI cards installed. Better throughput, AND it doesn't have to share =)

That might not be the best metaphor, but I think it'll do =)

[chris64]

pablito:

The memory in Video cards use similar memory types as the Motherboard e.g. sdram, ddr but you can't plug the motherboard memory into the Video card and vice versa.