Stratix Professional Edition vs Cyclone Edition

[Altera_Forum]

What advantages does Stratix Prof Edition have compared with Cyclone Edition? 

The price of Stratix Prof Edition is much higher. Just because Stratix Prof Edition can achieve a higher DMIPS than Cyclone Edition?  Thank you very much!!!!

[Altera_Forum]

It's due to the FPGA populated on the board. The main differences between the two boards are 1) The Stratix part (1s40) on the Pro board is much larger in terms of logic elements and memory resources compared to the Cyclone part (1c20). 2) The Cyclone board has an EPCS device (it's a storage device that you can put your hardware design and software into). Everything else is the same (SRAM, SDR SDRAM, LAN91c111, Flash, Proto headers, etc....)

[Altera_Forum]

...For the money you might consider going with the Stratix II kits... Same cost, almost as much logic as the 1S40 chip (for the 2S30 Stratix II kit).. the first run of Stratix II kits used 2S60 ES (engineering sample) devices, offering even more logic (there are some documented issues with using all of the M-RAM in these ES devices though, which is why the larger device is offered at the same price).