[capone]

Why not add an AGP slot to the next line of G4s. The mac is a graphics machine, therefore many people run dual monitors. Many times the standard Graphics card isnt powerful enough for the user, but if they want to run dual monitors they must buy a better card, but for the PCI interface. This slows performance a lot. It is a waste of a card. Who agrees/disagrees? Reasons?

[reader50]

Multiple AGP slots have long been a neat idea for me. I suspect it is readily possible, but it is hard to tell because the PCI & AGP specs are closed to the public.

Dual monitors (or more) is the way to go.

If dual AGP slots became the norm, it would force development of multi-monitor games too. Naturally, we are actually concerned with productivity software, but those usually lack Fire buttons & gamepad/joystick support. That makes productivity software rather boring. Wouldn't it be cool to shoot up your files when they mess up too bad?

Yes, I'd like to see dual AGP. And I'd even pay a little more for that extra slot. Not $500 more, but maybe $100 - $200. It would be nice if a basic card came in the 2nd slot, so people could see what a difference a 2nd monitor makes.

[Cipher13]

It would be great to have 2 AGP slots. I'm sorta reluctant to do dual monitors with my G4 cause I don't want to get a crappy card, but I don't want a PCI Radeon or anything, which would be faster than my AGP card, but on the slower bus

I might get a PCI Rage 128...

Dual AGP is a great idea...

[oscar]

AGP bus was made for programs that require lots of bandwidth, mostly games, and 3d rendering. Why in the heck would you need 2 agp buses, plan on playing a game, and doing a gassuen blur on a 200MB file? Yea....

[glurx]

I vote no. I don't use dual monitors and don't plan to in the future. An extra AGP slot will just increase my costs without giving me any additional value.

I know that some people would really love to have this but I don't think the percentage is large enough to justify the increased cost to the rest of us.

[larkost]

I am sorry to burst you collective bubbles, but dual AGP is not going to happen, Intel designed it as a One-Memory-System -> One-AGP-Slot system. there are a whole number of technical reasons why a second AGP slot is just not going to happen, but the biggest is in the AGP memory sharing architecture. One of the big pushes to AGP was at the time of design it looked like video memory was going to be a prohibitively expensive thing. We all know now that that was false, but AGP was designed from the ground up to allow sharing of main memory, and the "North Bridge" chip (Wintell term.. the current analogue in Mac's is called UniNorth) is hard wired to allow for some tricks to facilitate this two-member sharing of memory.

In order for Apple (or anyone) to put a second (active) AGP connection they would have to come up with some real magic to solve the hairy concurrency issue that adding another dance partner to this dance floor would cause. I could see a possible solution to this by separating memory into two divisions, and only letting each AGP slot see one section, but this would cause a very hairy (not to mention proprietary) mess on the CPU side of the dance card.

And to top that all off, there is almost no reason to do so. The vast majority of people (like me) who use two or more monitors (a small group to start off with) use the secondary monitors as passive screens, that is simply displaying static data (reference material, status monitors, ICQ displays, browser checks on in-progress webpages, etc..) while all the dynamic, graphic card intensive, work stays on the primary monitor. For these static displays there is almost no advantage to going to AGP, or even to a newer card at all (Rage128 is overkill). And remember that you can't use AGP for anything but a graphic card, so if you wanted one more slot for, say, a video production card, you are out of luck.

Now here is the good news: Due to the absolutely horrible way that all of Microsoft's OS's handle multiple video cards, the Wintell world came up with another way of getting multiple monitors: "Dual Head". And there is currently one offering on the Mac platform in this category, the ProMax DH-Max, a 5" AGP card with two monitor hookups that can fit into both the G4's and Cubes. It currently only works under MacOS 9.x, but I emailed them and got a reply that they are actively working on MacOS X drivers (important to me as my home system is a cube running MacOS X... and I miss multiple monitors... now if there were only some way of getting multiple ADC monitors on a Cube...).

[ 06-10-2001: Message edited by: larkost ]

[Corinthian]

Hi,
Before we go on to discuss would Dual AGP slots be possible, it's necessary to know why we would need them. I really have no idea why people would need to have two monitors working at the same time, if you are not computer sellers. Graphics? We may need to know others' opinions but I really don't think two or persons can modify the same picture on the same computer at the same time, right? Games? We can but how do you share the control? It's quite unfair and inconvenient to play with different controls, too. So why are we needing them? \
I just want to know, and so, please tell me..............

[Nimisys]

Dual-Head rocks! and so does the extension eDualHead (or for you guys iDual-Head)...

best yet both nVidia and ATi have their forms, but Matrox's implementation is still the best of them (thats what's in the ProMax card...G400 DH)either way we got competion going on which is always a good thing.

Either way this looks to be the best way of doing it... one slot..two cards.

[cmcleod design]

why not consider someone releasing a dual ADC ported AGP card?

Dual ADC likely will not happen as ADC provides power to the monitor. It would be really hard if not impossible to pump enough juice into it to fuel two LCDs, even though they take much less power than CRTs.

Also, an AGP bridge (allowing more than one AGP slot) is not available, and many doubt it would ever be possible.

--CX

[Vsx1]

Now that Apple has dropped the CRT scene altogether, thier dual monitor option is currently pointless. I'd like to see a dual AGP 4x PowerMac. As a matter of fact Apple featured a story on someone who wanted a dual Cinema PM (Apple was working w/ them)! I tried looking for it (in the Features section of Apple site) but couldn't find it.

As for why someone would wants a dual AGP Mac is nearly irrelavent. I realize that the population of dual monitor users is small and for those who have the $ for 2 or more monitors can pay extra for the features they need to get their jobs done. For example, when i'm surfing the web I'll have any where from 1 to 8 webpage windows and the same time...granted they all overlap but that eats time searching the desired webpage. And for those making a website being able to see several pages layed out side by side is big help.

Plus Apple likes to lead when it comes to technology so why not be the first with dual AGP computer maker.

My 2 cents

[reader50]

Originally posted by Corinthian:
<STRONG>Hi,
Before we go on to discuss would Dual AGP slots be possible, it's necessary to know why we would need them. I really have no idea why people would need to have two monitors working at the same time, if you are not computer sellers. Graphics? We may need to know others' opinions but I really don't think two or persons can modify the same picture on the same computer at the same time, right? Games? We can but how do you share the control? It's quite unfair and inconvenient to play with different controls, too. So why are we needing them? \
I just want to know, and so, please tell me..............</STRONG>

The primary motivation for dual monitors is cost. Because monitor costs go up faster than screen real estate, you can get more screen for less by going dual or triple, etc. Sometimes the money saved can be considerable.

Example: The 22" Cinema Display has a screen area of about 220 square inches while the 15" Cinema Display has about 108 square inches. Here is how the math works out:

1 x 22" Cinema Display - 220 square inches - $2,500 ($11.36 per square inch)
2 x 15" Cinema Displays - 216 square inches - $1,200 ($5.56 per square inch)

By using two 15" displays instead of the one 22", you get just about the same screen real estate, for under half the price. The 17" Cinema Display has an in between value of 138 square inches, and a price of $1,000 ($7.25 per square inch). If you used two 17" displays, you would still pay only 80% of the 22" price, for 25% more screen. You do have to figure in the price of another video card & any needed adapters to make the prices accurate, but you still usually come out well ahead of the game.

While the prices are lower for CRT displays, the same curve tends to hold true. A pair of 17" CRT monitors will set you back less than a 21" monitor, but will give more real estate. Also, if you want a monitor larger than 21", you would have to step up to a plasma display for $5,000 or so. Two 21" monitors will likely set you back $1,000 - $2,000, so dual monitors also allow you to effectively have a larger CRT monitor than is currently on the market. Again, for a large cost savings.

Upgrading to a 2nd monitor is even cheaper since you already have a monitor. In my case, I bought a 19" monitor. There was nothing wrong with my 15" monitor - I had just outgrown it. Instead of sticking the 15" on a shelf as an emergency spare, I bought a cheap PCI video card and have two monitors now. Multiple monitors do not have to be the same size.

It's not quite as good as a larger single monitor, but it sure saved me money. I usually have a browser or productivity window open on the 19" monitor. The 2nd monitor holds the instant messaging windows when I'm on the internet, or the tool windows when I'm in the productivity software. And I moved all my pop-up windows to the 2nd monitor so they would not pop up in front of my working documents on the main monitor.

As for why we need more bandwidth for the 2nd monitor, it comes to acceleration & screen savers for me. My cheap 2nd vid card has lousy acceleration, live window dragging becomes a slide show when the window hits the 2nd monitor. And my OS X screen savers glitch up badly because the 2nd vid card is not the equal of the primary card. This last may be a software glitch, screen savers seem to want to sync the displays on both monitors. Still, savers are only going to get more animated.

If multiple-monitor games came out, I can see a flight sim game, with three monitors. In addition to the main central view, you would have a side window view on right and left - just like in a real cockpit. The same could be applied to driving, RPG, and shooter games. And they would need the AGP bandwidth if you want them to keep up with the main display.

Apologies about the long answer - I hate reading those too.

[ 06-10-2001: Message edited by: reader50 ]

[Nimisys]

but the bandwidth could still be provided throught the single AGP card as ATi has done with HydraVision, nVidia with theirs and Matrox with DualHead. As it stands now with a G400Max DH i can split anything on the two screens and set the amount of memory to each. with the G450 you can set independent res and refresh rates. ATi if they wannted could slap twp Radeons on one card and use their HydraVision without any loos for ewither screen. BUt with the exception of Coders, Designers, Artisit and the occasional Gamer their is no demand for Dual monitors. in fact i only really use my DH to pump the Video only to the TV (no desktop, no mouse, no menus, ect) for DVD's while i type or do internet in the background on the PC. Most people would rather just have one large screen instaed of two smaller ones.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by Nimisys:
<STRONG>Most people would rather just have one large screen instaed of two smaller ones.</STRONG>

Count me as one of those "most". I'd prefer a Cinema over 2 15's anyday. I could see 2 screens coming in handy for Final Cut users, Photoshoppers, or things like that. I wouldn't mind a 2nd display, but 1 really big one would be very cool.

[Leonard]

I think the main reason some people want Dual AGP slots is, they buy a G4 with one AGP card, upgrade to a new faster video card, and find the old card useless, because you don't have a second AGP slot to put it in, just PCI slots.

That's why I bought a PCI Radeon for my G3, when I upgrade to my G4, I'm gonna take the PCI Radeon out of my G3 and use it as a second monitor for my G4. Then I'll sell my G3 with the stock Rage 128 in it.

[roders]

Why do people make such a meal of things, Dual head vid cards are the answer Nvidia makes a version of the Geforce 2MX with Dual head tech (the ability to run two monitors of one vid card) two AGP slots are daft, it would stick the price up for everyone, even though only a minority would use them, a monitor showing mainly 2D does NOT need an AGP interface, a Dual head card would be cheaper than a second AGP slot, and would mean you would not have to scarifice an existing PCI slot.
A second AGP slot is a daft idea, but I thinks it's equally as daft that Apple has'nt introduced the option of having a Dual head card (especialy on the Cube) since Nvidia make what is essential a Mac compatible one.

[zac4mac]

Not sure about this "impossible" thing, but I'd like dual AGP slots too.

I have a G4 DP with an Apple 20" multi-synch on the AGP Radeon and a VGA 17" on a PCI Orion.
I usually have three or more apps running at a time and use most of the available real estate.

Right now, Netscape is full screen on the 20 , RC5 and Klondike(kills time while the forum pages load) are on the 17.
I feel handicapped on a single monitor system.

Z

[capone]

I have many reasons to use dual monitors, and I dont feel like listing them all here.

I knew that I wanted the radeon, but if I wanted dual monitors I would either have to buy a PCI radeon or AGP radeon+other PCI card. It feels wrong installing such a powerful card (radeon) into a PCI slot when it could perform much better in an AGP slot. Also, I demand a lot from my Mac. Yes, I do need two high-powered 3d cards, because of all the work I do. I dont have the money to buy a PCI radeon and a good 3d PCI card. So I left the Rage128 in my AGP slot and got a PCI Radeon. I have a 17" StudioDisplay on the radeon and a 14" Multiple Scan display on the rage. I know I am not getting the most from my radeon because of the PCI interface. It would be nice if I could get the most from all my hardware.

Thank You larkost for your in-depth answer. Now I think Dual Head cards are the way to go, I only wish they had made it for the Radeon.

Reader50, you hit the nail on the head. Screen space is what is most important. Thank You.

And oscar, I do work similar to that every day. Not that heavy, but having two AGP cards would be very handy.

Thanks to all of you for your input

[Nimisys]

MAtrox=DualHead=HydraVision=ATi=Radeon VE

questions?

[Archangel]

Originally posted by Nimisys:
<STRONG>MAtrox=DualHead=HydraVision=ATi=Radeon VE

questions?</STRONG>

Yeah, which one is best? Any recommendations? I don't want to buy a PCI Radeon.

[capone]

Do they make Radeon VE for mac now?

[iPad]

larkost is correct, having two AGP slots is pretty hard to implement, and would require 2 northbridges, or one beefed up one that could handle 2 AGP implementations.

There is no reason for this idea, as mentioned above, a Rage 128 itself is an overkill, and most dual monitor users will only require basic static 2D to be displayed in the 2nd monitor. There is not any market demand either for multimonitor games, and there will probably not be. For those G4 users, you only suffer that tiny disadvantage when upgrading to a new AGP card, but by having 2 AGP card slot, Apple is going to have to spend quite a bit on funds R&D'in it and then it's going to be a failiure because you could always simply spend a meager $30 for a Rage Pro and it would still do fine, no worse than a Geforce 2, or a Radeon.

This is not innovative , but more along the words of stupid.

[BrunoBruin]

The one thing I regretting in buying my Cube was giving up the second small display I was running off my G3 at home. Once you've used two monitors, it's hard to go back.

I love having the second display at work -- it's incredibly handy to dump all your Photoshop and Illustrator palettes over there and have your main display uncluttered. I also have my office e-mail app and iTunes running over there; easier just to click on the mail window and make it active than go to the application menu and select it. (This is in 9.1, of course.)

I just replaced my old 20-inch Apple monitor with a Cinema Display, which is great, but I still like having those extra pieces off to the side. Your work really does expand to fill the space you have. I'd love to be able to run a 15-inch LCD as a second monitor instead of a CRT (which, being 15 inches, runs fine on an inexpensive ATI card).

For those who are complaining about the cost, the second ADC connector could be optional, just as Apple makes upgraded video cards optional. If a second connector is possible, about which I have no clue.

[capone]

Darn apple and targeting their largest consumer group.

[ 06-23-2001: Message edited by: capone ]

[Nimisys]

Originally posted by Archangel:
<STRONG>

Yeah, which one is best? Any recommendations? I don't want to buy a PCI Radeon.</STRONG>

Personally Matrox, the ones that debut it first seem to have it done the best, they have true support in win2k (don't ask me why it is so hard, i don't know) and the best software wriiten for it...ATi's is good but it doesn't have the features that Dual-Head does....

i honestly don't know if the PC Raedon VE (HydraVision) is the same as the Mac Radeon VE... i don't pay enough attention to new mac hardware, sorry.

[Lolo from Paris]

I've never seen a PC with 2 AGP slots, I don't think we will have a Mac like that...

AGP needs too much power by the way and if you want 2 monitors you can have a PCI card or AGP card with 2 connectors.

You don't need that much of performance for a second monitor, a PCI card is enough.

Apple really needs to work on bus speed, ram speed, and maybe we will be faster than Intel. Actually bus speed is too slow compared to intel. Don't forget G4 can't even saturate a Radeon or GeForce 2 MX...We need 1 Ghz G4 before 2 AGP slots ;-)

This brings up a question I had.... What's the difference in the "PCI" and "AGP" graphics g4s? I'm looking at used towers and wondering which is better to get (better as in, not out-dated, still compatible, contender in today's world, etc.) Would greatly appreciate a short e-mail reply to [email protected]!!! Or here, either way. Sorry about being off-topic.

Thanks.

[waffffffle]

I'm thinking Apple will offer an ADC PCI card so that people who want 2 cinema displays can have them.

[Graymalkin]

Like a few others have said, dual AGP slots will never happen (in AGP's current state). AGP differs from PCI in the fact that AGP is a port while PCI is a bus, buses share bandwidth and communicate through the PCI controller to the main memory controller. The PCI controller is responsible for routing information to the specific bus address that a device lies on. Ports are connections with a single address and in the case of AGP, connects directly to the Northbridge of the memory controller (what links the memory to the non-processor parts of the system). Having two AGPs would mean you'd need to rework the addressing and functions of the Northbrige which is a very costly thing to do, not only in development and production costs but also architecturally. You'd need to add an AGP controller either to the Northbridge or in a separate die which would make it little more than a high speed PCI bus. This kills half of an AGP's usfulness because the direct connection to system RAM allows AGP to share system RAM with the card. Mastered buses can't directly access main system RAM because they're designed only to talk to the bus controller.

There's little need for a second AGP slot in a motherboard anyhow, 4xAGP has way more bandwidth than even four displays could use. Apple needs to get on the ball with both ATi and nVidia and get them to crank out dual DVI AGP cards with the Radeon and GeForce. The GeForce2MX in my PC is a dual head and I can tell you it rules. I used to use two video cards (a Viper v770 AGP and a Voodoo3 2000 PCI) and now I don't need to bother. I think they've yet to impliment it because of the current draw of the DVI monitors. With the monitor's power as well as power for the USB ports coming out of the video card you'd be hard pressed to keep that circuitry running. In response to reader50's comments about multi-head games, ever use the multi-head Matrox card? They bragged you could use two monitors and yadda yadda, well it turned out even when games DID work with it people were sorto f unhappy switching their focus between different monitors. It turns out your eye and brain don't like doing that very much especially while looking at colour information. I'm not trying to osund like a hell, it's just a hard thing for your eyes to do. I have problems switching monitors in 2D mode. I've got a 19" at 1600x1200 and a 15" at 1024x768.

[reader50]

ATi does not offer the Radeon VE for Mac, nor do they offer drivers for the card for Mac. Not even unsupported drivers. Currently ATi offers only the Radeon 32 DDR card for Mac, in AGP & PCI versions. They cost about US$200 each.

nVidia does not supply any Mac retail cards at present. Apple supplies the OEM AGP nVidia cards, which appear to be the reference boards with ADC added. Apple does not supply a dual-monitor nVidia card, nor a PCI nVidia card. People have reported good results using PC boards that closely follow the nVidia reference AGP boards, but have reported problems with the PCI boards. I have not heard of anyone trying a dual monitor PC version.

Matrox does not offer any products for Mac at all, nor any drivers. You would have to buy the company to force development of a Mac version. Your new Mac-compatible Matrox card would cost upwards of US$10 million, or whatever Matrox is currently valued at. That would be one expensive graphics card.

If a Mac owner wants a dual-monitor card, they have just two options that I know of. There is a 2+ year old card from ixMicro, in PCI. ixMicro has been out of business for over a year. Their OpenGL drivers are buggy (so are their other drivers), and the drivers will never be updated.

Then there is the ProMax DH-Max card mentioned by larkost. It is an AGP card and has improved. It used to cost US$500 and lacked OpenGL drivers ("coming soon"). Now it costs US$300, and has the OpenGL drivers.

And what if we want three or more monitors? PCI. Unless you have a Cube.

I disagree that adding another AGP slot would be expensive. It would require a new Northbridge chip as mentioned. Actually a new Pangea chip - the unified North-South chip Apple is currently using. However, Apple develops all their chipsets in-house anyway, and are working on the UMA3 chipset now. Adding a feature to a chipset already under development would cost almost nothing.

Nimisys, recommending boards that we cannot use looks bad. It might appear to some that you are pushing them to buy an x86 system. Adding an x86 system to the price of the graphics card results in a very expensive card, over US$1,000 in most cases. You can get dual GeForce3's for that price - if you had a 2nd AGP slot for the 2nd GF3.

Graymalkin, you tolerate more eyestrain than I do. I backed my 19/15 combination down to 1152 & 832. 1600 & 1024 were just too squinty. Also, you are looking at different dot pitch, I dislike windows appearing to change size when I drag or split them across both monitors. I suggest 1600 & 1152, that would put the 15" very close to the same dot pitch as the 19".

[ 06-24-2001: Message edited by: reader50 ]

[Nimisys]

i was talking about it from what i know... which is the x86 side. This has been more of a technical discussion anyhow so as a point of reference it is valid. Furthermore many places design the Mac/PCI side first and then adapt it to the current x86/AGP world. the small demand for mac hardware/small market is what limits them from ever seeing the light of day.

Just so you know that ProMedia DH card is a matrox g400DH that has been adapted for the MAC and given driver support, but it does use the G400 chip in it. Also Dual-Head is the matrox trademark, not nVidia's or Ati's (which is HydraVision), but just like Kleenex and Xerox their trademarks have become the generic name for that style of product.

If the PC world ever went to dual-AGP (we would get it first), Apple has done onething that all but prevents it from ever coming ot you and that is there ADC connection. 90% of all PC Moobos come with AGP 4x PRO slots that provide extra power to the AGP card if it requires it, like many of the Pro OpenGL cards do. the GF3was suppose to be the first consumer card to take advantage of it, but i don't think it does. I am almost positive that the Radeon2 will need it as it has support for AGP8x, and almost certainly will need the extra power.

Now apple has decided that they want to power the monitor via the video card with gets it's power from the mobo with takes 3.3volts from the power supply. this is the same 3.3 volts the CPU shares as well. If new cards are starting to push the limits provided by the current non-pro slots. even some of the early compatiblity problems you heard about with the GF and the K7 were from mobo makers not providing all the power in the AGP spec.

So if one slot can barely provide enough power to support a video card and maybe the monitor, you want to power another one on it? in theroy the idea is great, but like with many things reality is much much less attracitve. Perhaps when ADC dies then you guys can have a dual connector AGP card.