Hardware - Best performance video card bus question

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Best performance video card bus question

Waylander

2004-08-18, 12:17 am

this question is driving me nuts... not sure if its bad wording or my bad understanding of the subject... probably the latter...

Which type of video card provides the best performance on a computer with an intel 80486 processor? (select the best choice)

a. PCI
b. AGP
c. ISA
d. MCA
e. EISA

I'm not sure what the question wants, my first instinct was to say AGP, as this is specifically made for graphics, and is the best available. but then, would an 80486 system board have an AGP slot?
i can rule out ISA, as this is a 16 bit bus, and an 80486 processor is 32 bit...
so, go for 32 bit buses... problem is, i believe EISA, PCI and MCA are all 32 bit buses, i read somewhere that PCI and EISA were made to cope with the demands of the 80486 processor, and that of the two, PCI produces the best results. so maybe it's the PCI...
but then, what about MCA, i have no idea... my gut tells me its MCA, for what reason i have no idea... probably cause its the only one i don't have a story for, which makes me nervous...

any ideas?

badpapajj

2004-08-18, 1:25 am

MCA was a licenced product of IBM, it was not released to the public. EISA was an improvement on ISA, 32-bit, and a competitor to MCA. It is also backward compatible to ISA. PCI came out about the same time Pentiums did. AGP is an accelerated PCI.
Based on this I would choose EISA.

WPFossil

2004-08-19, 7:51 am

80486 mobos had PCI slots, so I'd go with PCI as the answer.

badpapajj

2004-08-19, 8:41 pm

If thats the case then I agree "PCI". PCI came out about the time Pentiums did, but they may be included in later 80486.

Deja-vue

2004-08-21, 11:39 pm

Thread copied to the A+ Forum.
Perhaps the Gurus down there can help.

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