AGP Surfaces and Direct3D Devices

Using textures in 3-D applications can greatly enhance the appearance of realism in 3-D images. Memory for storing textures never seems as abundant as developers would like. DirectDraw and Direct3D support the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) architecture. The AGP architecture gives computers the ability to create DirectDraw surfaces in applications' memory spaces. This significantly extends the amount of memory available for storing textures.

Only the Direct3D HAL device supports the use of the AGP architecture. For more information on the use of the AGP architecture, see Using Non-local Video Memory Surfaces.