At 07:33 AM 2/18/98 -0800, Bridgett Perry wrote:
> Bob Wright replied:
>
>"You can get a good mid-level Pentium2 motherboard & a PII-233MMX chip
>for around $500, (wholesale here in the USA).   This will give you AGP
>support for your graphics card...  and there are a great many
>AGP video cards available, they are the fastest thing available.
>Be sure you get the 440LX AGP chipset on your motherboard."
>
>Like Lance, I will also be looking to build a system to be used with
>graphics. Could you please tell me what AGP is.  Is the 440LX AGP
>chipset uniquely good for graphics?  I was considering the TX chipset
>but am not certain of the difference.
>
>Thanks for clarifying,
>
>Bridgett Perry


AGP is Accellerated Graphics Port.  This is a new concept in the way
a motherboard gives the graphics card access to the processor and
the Ram memory.  This removes the bottle neck of moving graphics
through the PCI bus and allows the graphics card direct access to
the Pentium II chip / L2 cache and the system memory.  It can be
as much as 12.5 frames per second faster than conventional PCI
video cards.

The AGP card has a special slot on the board.  This removes the
video from the PCI bus to allow other devices in the PCI bus more
bandwidth.  It speeds up the entire system.

Cyrix and AMD have implemented new chips that are intended to
stay in the Pentium or Socket 7 range, use an AGP port on the older style
system Pentium boards and still move up to the 300mhz range.  The
only problem is that the socket7 does not offer the DIB or Dual
Independent Bus.  This DIB connects the processor to the L2 cache
and the system bus, speeding up the whole system, including the
graphics.   I notice that you can now buy Pentium motherboards with
the AGP socket and support the 100mhz bus speeds.  I personally
believe it is a mistake consider using a socket 7 motherboard with
processor chips above 200mhz.   They are only going allow minimal
use of the processor speed, although they will allow for "inexpensive"
300mhz machines.  But, you get what you pay for...  *wink*

My personal opinion about processor chips, 233mhz and above, is to
go with the PentiumII chips.  It will allow for far better utilization of
graphics speeds.

Bob