Video Card Motherboard Connectors

Will Your Motherboard Support the Video Card You Are Thinking Of Purchasing?

PCI Express video cards won't work with motherboards designed only for AGP or PCI video cards, and vice versa.

video connectors

There are 3 types of cardbus slots currently: PCI, AGP, and PCI Express (PCIe 2.0 is compatible with PCIe slot)

PCI Express is the newest technology that is superior to both PCI and AGP, in terms of graphic performance. It is as much as 4x faster than the fastest AGP 8X slot. PCI Express connections can support fast data transfer rates, which can be used to connect high-speed devices such as high-end video cards. The slots come in different variations and speeds, such as x1, x4, x8, and x16. Presently, most high-end motherboards meant for design, video production, or gaming come with PCI express slots. To use a PCI Express card, your computer must have at least one available PCI Express slot.
The AGP slot is next in line of higher graphic performance. It was designed especially for the throughput demands of 3-D graphics. It offers up to 8x improvement over a PCI card, is 32 bits wide and runs at 66 MHz. It provides a direct connection between the card and memory, and only one AGP slot is on the motherboard. The motherboard must be equipped with an AGP bus slot for an AGP card to be compatible.(AGP 1x provided a data transfer rate of 264 Mbytes/sec. AGP 2x is 528 Mbytes/sec. AGP 4x is 1 Gbyte/sec. AGP 8x is 2 Gbytes/sec.)
PCI is the most widely used I/O bus. It provides a shared data path between the CPU and peripheral controllers, such as network, display, SCSI and RAID cards. Though limited in terms of performance, PCI is considered the best value when you upgrade your video capabilities on a PC. The PCI interface can be found and used in nearly any motherboard.