Feature connector

Most of them were simply an 8, 16 or 32-bit wide internal connector, transferring data between the graphics card and another device, bypassing the system's CPU and memory completely.

Their speeds often far exceeded the speed of normal ISA or even early PCI buses, e.g. 40 MB/s for a standard ISA-based SVGA,[1] up to 150 MB/s for a VESA-based[3] or PCI-based one, while the standard 16 bit ISA bus ran at ~5.3 MB/s and the VESA bus at up to 160 MB/s bandwidth.

Unlike analog overlay devices however, a feature connector carried mainly data and essentially allowed an expansion card to access the graphics card Video RAM directly, although directing this data stream to the system's CPU and RAM was not always possible, limiting its usefulness mainly to display purposes.

Although its use rapidly declined after the introduction of the faster AGP internal bus, it was, at its time, the only feasible way to connect certain types of graphics-intensive devices to an average computing system without exceeding the available CPU power and memory bandwidth, and without the disadvantages and limitations of a purely analog overlay.

A variant of that idea, born for PCMCIA Card, is named Zoomed video port.