The AGP removes all the display data traffic from the PCI bus and gives that traffic its own 525-MB per second pipe into the system's chip set and, from there, straight to the CPU. It also provides a direct path to the system memory for handling graphics. This procedure is referred to as Direct Memory Execute (DIME). The AGP data path is shown in Figure 10.6.
Figure 10.6 AGP Direct Memory Execute offers priority access to display data
The AGP slot, if present, is the only one of its kind on the motherboard and is usually the slot closest to the keyboard connector (see Figure 10.7). It is set forward of the back PC's case than the PCI slots. APG connectors are found only on Pentium II-based and later computers or on similar CPUs from non-Intel vendors.
Figure 10.7 An AGP slot on the motherboard
