Strange slot where AGP should be...

TerrorFirmer

Hi,

I was looking at an msi motherboard earlier I got in an old PC. I tried to fit an old geforce 2 into what I assumed was an agp slot - more or less same size and brown in colour, but the dividers are actually completely off and there are three instead of AGP's one....any idea what this slot actually is anyone?

thanks

kaizersoze

It's the older type AGP slot and they operated at a different voltage than the later version iirc. The newer cards have the notch in a different position so you can't insert them. It's still an AGP slot though.

TerrorFirmer

kaizersoze wrote:

It's the older type AGP slot and they operated at a different voltage than the later version iirc. The newer cards have the notch in a different position so you can't insert them. It's still an AGP slot though.

Its not that old a mobo though, it was built for the PIII and out of dozens of machines, including considerably older Pentium II class ones, this is the first time I've ever seen it...

So how far would you have to go back to get it as standard? From what i've seen it doesn't feature in any of the PII/PIII orientated mobos I've encountered, which is quite a lot, so it'd seem strange that this one has it...

edit: Thanks for the info

kaizersoze

Don't know how old it is tbh and, like yourself, I haven't come accross it too often. It could just have have been a different flavour tried by some manufacturers. I've also come accross some AGP slots in older boards that have no deviders at all and any card will fit and work.
This might explain it better than me.

Because of the different voltages associated with various versions of AGP, the edge connectors are "keyed" so that a card won't fit into an incompatible slot (assuming both the card and the slot are compliant with the specifications). The keying is actually a gap along the edge connector that indicates support for a particular voltage.


Edge connector for a card capable of 3.3 or 1.5 volts (as indicated by the left and right gaps, respectively) over an AGP slot requiring
support for 1.5 volts

If the slot requires a gap at a certain location, cards without that gap (that is, without support for the corresponding voltage) won't fit into that slot. The original AGP 1.0 specification only supported voltages of 3.3 volts but subsequent revisions supported 1.5 and 0.8 volts. So, older computers designed to the original specification may not support some newer AGP cards.

From here: http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/cadgis/products/agp_pci_pcie.php

DublinEvents

Yeah I had this issue with a Geforce 3 from ASUS. It was a fine card but they just had to design it to be 3.3V. My brother still has it. It will get dumped with the computer when that computer is deemed too old.

TerrorFirmer

http://www.msi.com.tw/images/product_img/mbd_img/6178.jpg

Thats the mobo - its still not 3.3v though...I checked

Thanks guys, appreciated.

Also people seem to be using p3 733 and even 900 100mhz cpus in this board no problem but I'm using a 700mhz Celeron, anything above that - I've tried two working 733 cpus - and the computer boots but no signal to monitor and doesn't boot into windows. any idea?

TerrorFirmer

According to a manual they are amr and pti slots right beside each other...

So basically it's not an agp slot at all, just looks like one on first glance to a young lad like myself.