AGP Pro, used for extra voltage and wattage for workstation class cards. The obstruction is actually a slot blank filler that usually was put in place by the manufacturer for whatever reason.

My previous machine had such a thing in the slot too, just piece of plastic put there for whatever reason so no problem taking it out to make cards fit in.

agp pro 50 isn't modern tho it's just obscure, like scsi, and pcix was for average users because they were only used in high end computers.

Thanks for the posts guys!

Well there you go... a humble little 386 user like me learned something new today. I had no idea there was more than one version of AGP! I last used AGP in the 90's and have not been forward since... but I can see since then there were some changes.

What sort of cards are out there for AGP PRO? Also, will they make any difference to gameplay... are there any games that actually would utilise such a card?

Regarding the board, it looks like may I now have a fault to find! It is an ASUS A7N8X... so will do the usual check of RAM / CPU... and if it's nothing obvious, it may be the caps require a change!

Not sure if there were any consumer products on AGP PRO slot. It was mostly used for Graphic Workstations.

386_junkie wrote:

What sort of cards are out there for AGP PRO?

Video cards that need more electric power than a regular AGP can supply and whose designers don't like the idea of getting power from a molex plug.

386_junkie wrote:

Also, will they make any difference to gameplay... are there any games that actually would utilise such a card?

The short answer is no. The difference between AGP and AGP pro is merely electrical. A card, for example, FireGL X1, can be made into AGP version with molex or AGP pro version, and software sees them as the same card.

In reality almost all AGP pro cards are made for workstations. Some of them, for example, pre-ATi FireGLs, only support OpenGL. Some of them, for example, Wildcats made by 3dlabs can support both D3D and OpenGL. ATi made some FireGLs in AGP pro with their R300 chips, so their performance should be more or less on the same level as R300. AGP pro also appears on PowerMac G5 and there are several cards made in that form factor but they will not boot on PC motherboards.

Basically only really old AGP cards that were designed for like CAD and 3D modeling at the time. You would be better off with like the later Nvidia 8x AGP Quadro for the same programs that those cards were intended for..