How to tell if a card is AGP or PCI-E

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by Perineum

Well okay, I suppose. I'm of the sort that I wouldn't attempt to work on anyone else's hardware unless I was pretty confident of what I was doing.



And you know what? If you applied there they wouldn't hire you....

For the most part the type of port should be silkscreened on right next to the port.

IE:

In fairness, he wasn't asking how to identify a motherboard's slot, he was asking how to easily identify an AGP card just by looking at it. Motherboard slots are (IMO) a lot easier to identify as you've got a reference to the rest of the board. I've been building/repairing PCs for 15+ years and I still find it a lot easier to put one up beside a different card rather than just automatically looking at the pins to determine what kind of slot it is.

[MacJunky]

The AGP cards have differently shaped pins. Not only are they wider (at their widest point) but the shape gives em away before anything else. Well, that and how the connector are very far away from the card's bracket.

I think this is just a really silly question.

Here is a clearer pic showing the AGP cardedge than the 6800s above.


I would bust out an MCA card but I doubt that the OP would have ever seen one before and it may just confuse him. :P Unfortunately I do not have any NuBus cards, if I was going to post a pic of MCA and/or ISA I would have to include NuBus!
I have never had any issue identing cards.. I do not really get what the problem is.

[ilya]

Originally Posted by sswilson

In fairness, he wasn't asking how to identify a motherboard's slot, he was asking how to easily identify an AGP card just by looking at it. Motherboard slots are (IMO) a lot easier to identify as you've got a reference to the rest of the board. I've been building/repairing PCs for 15+ years and I still find it a lot easier to put one up beside a different card rather than just automatically looking at the pins to determine what kind of slot it is.

No offense, but I frankly find that very hard to believe for someone with that much experience.

AGP cards IMO are ridiculously easy to identify once you've seen a few of them. No other computer standard even looks remotely similar. The closest things I can think of are EISA and ISA, but those were phased out (except in certain military systems) around the time I was in kindergarten and still look very different from AGP. (wider keyed slots, thinner pins, spaced out pins, etc.) AGP cards should be the easiest to identify due to the spacing of the keyed slots, but since the standards vary due to compatibility, the pins would be a better identifier. AFAIK no other expansion card standard has the same shape or size of pins.

EDIT: ed

[Dr_BenD_over]

Originally Posted by Perineum

And you know what? If you applied there they wouldn't hire you....

They probably wouldn't. They'd insist I have some worthless certification. If I wanted to be certified, I could pay my yearly dues and be done with it, or check myself into the funny farm.

[Brian@NCIX]

I used to work at best buy as a geeksquad tech, we'd charge 50$ for a harddrive format to NTFS, or 100$ to reinstall the operating system, it was very saddening :(

Now I work at NCIX, happy man is happy.

[headsh0t]

Originally Posted by JJThomp

I'm not that surprised most people my age don;t even know what AGP was and I'm 21 so there are definately people my age doing PC repair.

The only reason I know what AGP looks like is because my dad won a video card when I was like 10 so I installed it. It was like a geforce 4 or 2 I can't even remember. The video card in my computer wasnt even made by nvidia... I think it was made by SiS lol long time ago.

Okay so I still had the card in my basement it was a diamond viper II which used neither nvidia or ati graphics.

If you're talking about someone who is not into computers, then they probably don't even know what PCI-Express. I'm 22 and my the first system i built had a 6800gt in it so PCI-Express was just on the way in. OP must be like 16 or something, even then I would be surprised for him to have never heard about AGP being on a hardware forum. Really though a simple google search would've sufficed. But know you know, and knowing is half the battle.

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by ilya

No offense, but I frankly find that very hard to believe for someone with that much experience.

AGP cards IMO are ridiculously easy to identify once you've seen a few of them. No other computer standard even looks remotely similar. The closest things I can think of are EISA and ISA, but those were phased out (except in certain military systems) around the time I was in kindergarten and still look very different from AGP. (wider keyed slots, thinner pins, spaced out pins, etc.) AGP cards should be the easiest to identify due to the spacing of the keyed slots, but since the standards vary due to compatibility, the pins would be a better identifier. AFAIK no other expansion card standard has the same shape or size of pins.

EDIT: ed

Heh... no offence taken. I'm quite comfortable with my level of experience.... :)

Maybe it comes from having gone through all of those different video card slot formats, or maybe it's just the way my brain is wired (or maybe it's because I never bothered to concern myself with needing to be able to identify the slot on the fly since I've always got something on hand to compare it to.... ;) ).

MacJunky probably hit on the closest thing to a quick identifying feature in that the pins are different, but I'd describe it more that the contacts are double depth (two contacts interlaced), and dismiss any link to distance from backplate without a reference card or a motherboard to look at. ;)

As I said though, maybe it's just the way my brain is wired WRT how I associate things.

Obligitory pic from my tickle trunk follows...... ;)

[dma0991]

Originally Posted by belaud

I used to work at best buy as a geeksquad tech, we'd charge 50$ for a harddrive format to NTFS, or 100$ to reinstall the operating system, it was very saddening :(

Now I work at NCIX, happy man is happy.

That is outrageously expensive for something that can be done in less than an hour these days. Luckily it is a skill that I've learned since Windows 98.

[Perineum]

Originally Posted by sswilson

In fairness, he wasn't asking how to identify a motherboard's slot, he was asking how to easily identify an AGP card just by looking at it. Motherboard slots are (IMO) a lot easier to identify as you've got a reference to the rest of the board. I've been building/repairing PCs for 15+ years and I still find it a lot easier to put one up beside a different card rather than just automatically looking at the pins to determine what kind of slot it is.

Well I'm assuming his current repair PC thread and this one are intertwined like the rest of his threads.

In that case he'd be pulling the card out of a slot, and the name of the port is usually silkscreened on the motherboard

[Blu]

Originally Posted by headsh0t

OP must be like 16 or something,.

I'm twenty but really just got into doing custom builds when I was around 16 so never really had any experience with AGP cards as even my five-six year old dell p4 runs on PCI-E. I didn't google it cause I thought I would get a more thorough answer from you guys, I never expected the low blows and such, doesn't really take much to fix a pc though, diagnosing it is pretty simple as this one appears to be just a loose IDE cable on the motherboard, but I need to connect my new monitor to it to be 100% sure and then I need to contact him on what upgrades he might be interested in. Sure I don't have ton of experience like some of you guys but we all got to start somewhere right?