FW: [Elecraft] OT - Way off topic, but Dell is giving away machines

[Donald K. Duncan]

>About the "Desktop" vs "Server" question, "Dell does not support" does not
>mean it won't work. It does mean there is no AGP slot, but a PCI graphics
>card is fine for everything except Gaming, DVD viewing and CAD. Heck, the
>onboard Video is probably fine for hi-res, non real-time applications. The
>SC420 does have two "PCI Express" slots, whatever those are<g>.


AGP and PCI are going the way of ISA and are being replaced with PCI Express.
The latter is a serial bus and comes in a variety of "widths".  For video
you normally get a 16 or 32x PCI Express that has 16 or 32 high speed serial channels
feeding the video card.  It is at least an order of magnitude faster than AGP.


Here's a good link:

http://www.intel.com/technology/pciexpress/devnet/docs/WhatisPCIExpress.pdf


~Don
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