[ The PC Guide | Systems and Components Reference Guide | Video Cards ]

Video System Interfaces

Modern video systems involve a great deal of information that must be moved around, particularly between the video card, the processor and the system memory. The video system interface is the method by which the video coprocessor and video memory are connected to the rest of the computer.

The video card requires more I/O bandwidth to the processor and memory than any other device in the system. So much so, that video performance has traditionally been the driving factor for the creation of newer and faster system buses. Local buses were created to address the bottleneck in data transfer between the processor and video card that became acute when graphical operating systems became the standard. The first local bus was the VESA local bus, and VESA is a video-related standards organization.

This section looks at video bus interfaces and related concepts. A great deal more detail on system buses can be found in this section.

Next: ISA Bus

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