PCI

An Intel designed bus that facilitates quick communication between a peripheral and the computer's CPU. PCI buses let users install additional peripherals to a system and support plug-and-play capabilities. PCI is the major form of expandability available for the computer. Many kinds of PCI cards can be purchased, such as Video, TV / Radio tuner cards, and sound cards. Sometimes a PCI card will come with another addition as is the case with a DVD drive and it's PCI decoder card. The dominant uses or PCI cards are for either video cards or for modem / NIC cards. AGP (another expansion card architecture) is rapidly gaining ground as the dominant form for video cards.