There are several "standards" in PC video cards. AT bus (stone age) PCI (older) AGP (latest) PCI Express (new)
Of course MAC computers were light years ahead of PCs (still are) , but their retarded "proprietary" bus and software put those systems out of reach for most people.


AGP is very fast with a 2GBS transfer rate. It is uni-directional, meaning send and receive data maxes out at 8x rate of 2GBS over the same bus.
AGP is excellent for gaming, and some of the better cards will produce frame rates well in excess of 70 FPS on even the most complex games
As monitor resolution goes up however, frame rates plummet. The best one can do today on even the best graphics card (9800 or 6800) is about 65 FPS at 1600x1200 with full shading and aliasing. Anthing less of a card and you have to start shutting details off to preserve frame rates.


The fix - PCI Express
PCI Express is VERY FAST, it is bi-directional and has a max transfer rate of 8GBS (4 each direction)
So far it has supported frame rates as high as 190 on 1600 x 1200. What this means is that you can leave on maximum anti-aliasing, shading, detail, etc and still see
a smoothe picture at incredible high resolution... or you can step up resolution.


The two main suppliers of graphics accelerators (ATI and NVidia) have both modes available in most of their cards. Of course, you will only notice it in the high end like the Radeon X800 or GEforce6800 Ultra. You can only use one or the other unless your mobo maker supplies slots for either (some do) Dell's are cheap and most likely wont even have an AGP slot unless you bought one of the higher end desktops.

I have the 6800 GT Ultra .. amazing piece of hardware.... of course it cost near $600 when I bought it and won't run on less than a 500 watt power supply.
3Dmark rating on my system is over 4000 at 1600x1200 ! SMOKIN!

DP