Retaining backward compatibility with the older AGP 4x technology, AGP 8x doubles the graphics bandwidth of the AGP interface to 2.1 gigabytes per second (GB/s) which is designed to benefit applications on today's most popular workstation platforms. It is expected to impact the desktop market segment in 2003 as desktop applications become more bandwidth-intensive.
The new AGP8X interface offers the perfect solution to the insufficient bandwidth of AGP4X. Formerly, the 1GHz bandwidth of the AGP4X bus resulted in a data transfer bottleneck as other peripheral devices (i.e. transmission from the north and south bridge to memory or CPU) have bandwidths of 2-4GHz. Now, the AGP8x provides bandwidth of 2.1GHz, eliminating the frustration of insufficient bandwidth. We call this framework "Balance PC", meaning that data can flow freely in a balanced system that is working at optimal capacity.
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