How much faster is AGP?

As of late 2006, there are almost no motherboards being manufactured which feature AGP. Graphics processing is now handled by a PCI Express 16x slot, which allows for scalability of the GPU (link points to Nvidia's trademark; ATI has a competing protocol) as well as faster transfer rates to the mainboard. Theoretically, PCI Express allows much faster data transfer, is full-duplex, and also supports other devices. So far, 2006 has seen many motherboards available with PCIe slots, with some gamer-oriented configurations offering dual PCIe x16 slots. Many newer graphics cards are available exclusively in PCIe, with AGP versions of the same cards becoming correspondingly rare. At this rate, it is expected that AGP will be almost totally replaced within a few years.