AGP Pro

[Isaiah]

What is AGP Pro? What video cards can use it?
Is it any better?

Thanks
Isaiah

 

[Bartman39]

I asked the same question about 3-4 weeks ago and found that "Pro cards" are mainly used for graphic work stations they are supplied with more power via the extra slot area pins (I think for stability more than anything else) there are some that work off PCI slots also (I mean together in tandem) a very funky looking setup... I had found an ASUS 6800 64meg pro card for $200 but held out for a Geforce 2 GTS w/64megs (Awesome card BTW). I may be a little off base with this answer maybe others can clarify this better but that was what I had understood about a Pro type card...

 

[AndyHui]

AGP Pro cards (and slots) provide for greater power requirements. An extra 50 pins provides additional power for very hungry video cards.

There are 2 versions of the standard....AGP Pro 50 and AGP Pro 110. They provide 50 watts and 110 watts respectively. They run at AGP4x.

Generally, these have only been professional level cards that require massive amounts of power.....I have only seen nVidia GeForce family boards take advantage of it.

They really ought to have used it for the Voodoo 5's....save having to plug directly into the power, or using a power brick.

 

[Isaiah]

Thanks
I was just looking at my new Asus A7V and saw it had AGP Pro and I had to know what it was for



Isaiah

 

[UnrealBoy]

The downside to using the AGP PRo is that the card requires 1 or 2 adjacent PIC slots.

The V5 does not use AGP Pro simply as very few home computers have the slot.. and many would not want to give up the PCI slots!

Most of the current high end CAD/CAM cards require it thou.. WIldcats, 3Dlabs, Quadro Pro's etc.

 

[AndyHui]

Depending on the design of the AGP Pro card, you do not have to take up the additional PCI slots. The AGP Pro *standard* allows for wider cards that would take up room over the PCI slots, but a good design would not need the extra space. Generally the extra space is given towards cooling, or perhaps a daughter board. A few good heatsinks and chipset fans would do quite well....a number of people use slot fans to cool their cards, so they lose those PCI slots anyway.