Weird Half Height AGP cards

[Guest]

I work for an IT dept who has a bunch of IBM Intellistation E Pro’s. A bunch of people are wanting to upgrade their video cards (myself included) so we can kick each others asses in UT. Anyway, they use these really odd half height AGP cards. For some dumber then dirt reason IBM put the PS2 ports under the graphics port in line with the AGP slot. My first thought is IBM said “AGP, that’s cool, now how do we make it proprietary.” But I have seen the same type of thing on a Compaq. My room mate has a Diamond V770U that has a perforated corner that can be broken off to let it fit. AnandTech has a pic:
http://www.anandtech.com/showimage.html?u=/reviews/video/diamond/v770ultra/cardfront.jpg
Right where the notch would come out is the Keyboard/Mouse ports on the MoBo. So the question is what are the best cards I can get with this “feature”? Also what is this type of card called? (Apart from proprietary, stupid, asinine, retarded, etc.) Thanks for any help.
EvilGeek

 

[mpjesse]

Your best bet is to go to all the video card manufacturer's websites and look for a card with that "notch". GF2 MX's are usually small in size and might have a notch. Most website's have pictures of the cards. Good luck!

-MP Jesse

 

[Guest]

i think that format is called "NLX". try to take a look a Asus site and search "NLX" for the product.

good luck.

<font color=orange>What do you think? </font color=orange>

 

[Diemos]

For starters, "NLX" is a mobo and case format and has nothing to do with vid cards. If you just want to do some lunch hour fraggin than those Viper ultras should do just fine. Any thing more would be held back by the rest of the system. Happy fraggin, and good luck.

 

[Diemos]

sorry alex, just realized you were talkin about the mobo. Good job, not many peeps know about NLX

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I was wondering about that. Also I still haven’t gotten word back from Compaq or Diamond. I couldn’t even find a place to ask at bigblue. Oh well, I think I may just setup a gaming system of my own on at work. Systems today are so “cheap”. Thanks for the help anyway, I really didn’t know much about NLX boards before looking at them either…
EvilNick

 

[Crashman]

Hey, ppl, NLX is a CASE form factor used by many OEMS. Yes, they take NLX mobos and many use the NLX form AGP card, like the one spoken of here. Compgeeks sells these quite often. And many OEM vid cards are perferated to have a chunk broken out for this form factor. So check out the OEM cards with pics using your favorite site, like Pricewatch, to locate dealers.

 

[Guest]

OK, I just got a reply back from diamond and your first idea was really close to what it was, I could see how you made the mistake. Here is everything thing they said:
Dear Valued Customer,
This is an NX form factor. We currently do not manufacture boards that
support this form factor.

Uh, thanks guys... But I guess it does fully answer the question. Anyway, searching around I can’t find anything about NX. But there are about a million non-agp products that contain a model number with NX so that’s not surprising. I can’t even find anything about it in any of the AGP specs on Intel’s site. (But the AGP 8 spec looks neat.) Oh well, I guess its time to let this quest sleep. It looks like I’m screwed for now.
EvilNick

 

[Crashman]

Would you like to buy a Brand Spanking New Diamond V770 Ultra that would fit? I've got one here-it's a service replacement and has never even been mounted! Comes with the full retail box and all the software too. But you'll have to break the chunk out yourself. Check it out-Compgeeks had a bunch of Rendition 3 cards that were of that form factor-but they would be happy to include a standard backplate as well if you needed it. AGP is AGP reguardless of the weird slot arangement, the hardware is the same.

 

[Guest]

Thanks but no, the one my room mate has isn't really being used. I may get it supprt cheap from him. I was just wondering if there where newer cards in that form.

 

[Crashman]

You just have to keep looking-that form factor is still in use, the reason you can't get it from Diamond is that they no longer make cards! Even if they did, they probably only sold them in that form factor to OEMs.