Topic: AGP v PCI

[Simon]

What's actually the difference between AGP and PCI Graphics Cards?  A friend has a 5 year old PC, with no AGP slot.  He wanted to play 3D games, which his onboard graphics were not capable of, so I suggested, and installed, an nVidia TNT 32Mb PCI card for him.  

The first couple of games he loaded were brand new full on graphics types (Age Of Mythology and that sort of thing) which work fine, and the graphics are superb, but recently he has tried to install another couple of games, and they won't install.  He get's a short way into the installation, then gets error messages such as "data3.cab not found - please insert disc 0", when there is only one disc anyway.  Another game had a different error message, something about another "missing file" (sorry to be vague!).  Could this be the graphics card, or does it sound like something else?  

I wouldn't have thought the graphics card would have affected installing stuff, so my first thought was that the CD-ROM drive was playing up, but other things work fine, including previously installed games which run from the CD-ROM.

His machine runs Win98SE, has 128Mb SDRAM, but only a small hard drive.  Not sure about the CPU, but could find out if relevant.

Any comments appreciated!  

[bat69]

AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) cards serve the same purpose as PCI graphics cards. PCI bus works on 33Mhz and the AGP bus works on 66Mhz, so there is a speed difference there. AGP cards manage memory better than PCI cards. The AGP interface can actually use your computer's standard memory as well as the video memory to help boost video performance. There isn't a massive difference between AGP and PCI but with the increasing standards, now 8xAGP... the gap is widening

I got this from another site to help explain it:
Interface Bandwidth Clock speed PCI 133MB/s 33 MHz AGP 2x 533MB/s 66 MHz AGP 4x 1GB/s 133 MHz

As you can see from the above table, AGP has a higher theoretical bandwidth than PCI. Does this mean that AGP is better than PCI? Not necessarily. In general, actual performance of your AGP and PCI cards will depend upon many factors, including video card chipset, processor speed, cache installed, RAM type and amount installed, video mode, and operating system, just to name a few. However, comparing two otherwise identical video cards and systems, you can pretty much expect better performance out of AGP cards and systems.


Hope that answers the question

I'll think about the problem  

[Simon]

Thanks for that Bat - good information there.  
Now, has anyone any ideas about this games installation problem?  

[Sandra]

You mentioned a small hard drive Simon,has it enough left to install it ? Some programs seem to want a lot more for a cache than you would think  

[bat69]

Couple of thoughts,
1. Is there sufficient memory, 128Mb is a little thin for games, especially if a lot of things are being loaded into the memory at start up?
2. Has he tried copying everything to the HD from the CD and then installing the prog from the HD? (will rule out the CD not working)?
3. Does the machine meet the minimum spec required by the games?

[Simon]

You mentioned a small hard drive Simon,has it enough left to install it ? Some programs seem to want a lot more for a cache than you would think  

One of the games required 700Mb, but only 678Mb was left (told you it was small!), so he uninstalled some old stuff and freed nearly 900Mb, but still cutting it fine, although there should just have been room.

Couple of thoughts,
1. Is there sufficient memory, 128Mb is a little thin for games, especially if a lot of things are being loaded into the memory at start up?
2. Has he tried copying everything to the HD from the CD and then installing the prog from the HD? (will rule out the CD not working)?
3. Does the machine meet the minimum spec required by the games?

1. There are a lot of programs on the machine, including other games, and all the games say min 128Mb required, so that's a possibility.

2. No, but I'll suggest that.

3. See 1, sort of.  Has 3D games card.  The error messages don't really indicate lack of spec - they seem to be referring to missing installation files, but I tried the games on my PC and they installed OK.

Thanks for the suggestions - I'll get back to him with these.