Lots Of Power = Lots Of Heat
With so much huge power being consumed the card is naturally generating a lot of heat. Therefore, the AGP Pro graphics card will need the space of the neighbouring PCI slots for cooling. The AGP Pro50 (50W) card requires 1 adjacent unused PCI slot, and the AGP Pro110 (110W) Card requires up to 2 adjacent unused PCI slots.
Sample of an AGP Pro50 back panel of the Fire GL3 card
Final Thoughts
For the time being, mainstream graphic cards will remain normal AGP cards for several reasons, like cost and a graphics power budget below 25W. Workstation class or high performance motherboards will come with AGP Pro to gain market share in the prestigious high-end market, which will soon bring this beefed up AGP-slot to the mainstream motherboards as well. Finally, once AGP Pro motherboards become more widely available, those graphic cards might also follow into the mainstream market.
AGP Pro provides the steroids for graphic cards with more than 64 MB of high speed VGA memory, higher graphic chip clock-rates and additional graphic chips. Like every steroid it is first seen in the high-end graphics market and will then filter down into the mainstream market.
