PCI Express x1

[joe~V~3838]

I hate posting to mutiple news groups, but I'm trying to find out what
PCI Express x1 is going to be used for ?
I've done searches and couldn't find any info and figured that it would be
good to post this in the main motherboard newgroups at the same time in
hopes of getting a answer.
thanks in advance......

joe

 

[daytripper]

I hate posting to mutiple news groups, but I'm trying to find out what
PCI Express x1 is going to be used for ?
I've done searches and couldn't find any info and figured that it would be
good to post this in the main motherboard newgroups at the same time in
hopes of getting a answer.
thanks in advance......

With an uncooked peak data transfer rate of 2 Gigabits/second (256
Megabytes/second) a X1 link is useful for all but the brawniest host
adapters...

/daytripper

 

[Roland Scheidegger]

I hate posting to mutiple news groups, but I'm trying to find out what
PCI Express x1 is going to be used for ?
I've done searches and couldn't find any info and figured that it would be
good to post this in the main motherboard newgroups at the same time in
hopes of getting a answer.

Basically the idea is everything which uses PCI today will use
PCI-Express x1. Not much PCI-Express x1 cards exist right now of course.

 

[NightSky 421]

I hate posting to mutiple news groups, but I'm trying to find out what
PCI Express x1 is going to be used for ?
I've done searches and couldn't find any info and figured that it would be
good to post this in the main motherboard newgroups at the same time in
hopes of getting a answer.
thanks in advance......

joe

Good question. I also wonder if and when regular PCI slots will be dropped
from motherboards. I don't see that happening any time soon, but once sound
cards and everything get developed for the x1 slots, it might be good to
have that sort of "pure" environment where regular PCI doesn't exist.

Hope I haven't hijacked your thread by asking this.

 

[Cuzman]

" I've done searches and couldn't find any info and figured that it would
be good to post this in the main motherboard newgroups at the same time in
hopes of getting a answer. "


http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/nforce4-ultra/index.x?pg=15

 

[joe~V~3838]

thanks for the link cuzman, good review.
So, looks like many pci cards out now will be converted to
pci express x1 or higher in the near future... , interesting...
wonder what sound cards will use? x1, x4, or stay with regular pci?

 

[joe~V~3838]

Good question. I also wonder if and when regular PCI slots will be dropped
from motherboards. I don't see that happening any time soon, but once sound
cards and everything get developed for the x1 slots, it might be good to
have that sort of "pure" environment where regular PCI doesn't exist.

Hope I haven't hijacked your thread by asking this.

Hey Nightsky, that's the main reason I've asked this question and I don't mind you
'hijacking' the thread !
I wonder when Creative will have a pci express x1, or x4 ? sound card ....
it would seem like the onboard sound would be putting a hurting on creative
but so far that hasn't been the case...

 

[Richard Dower]

Hey Nightsky, that's the main reason I've asked this question and I don't
mind you
'hijacking' the thread !
I wonder when Creative will have a pci express x1, or x4 ? sound card ...
it would seem like the onboard sound would be putting a hurting on creative
but so far that hasn't been the case...

Creative have the new Audigy Zenith PCI-E 1x out in March 2005.

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

Hey Nightsky, that's the main reason I've asked this question and I don't mind you
'hijacking' the thread !
I wonder when Creative will have a pci express x1, or x4 ? sound card ...
it would seem like the onboard sound would be putting a hurting on creative
but so far that hasn't been the case...

Creative now sells "upgrades" to some of the on-board sound chips. My
P5P800 is like this. Maybe they figure they can sell the software
instead of the hardware like a number of other companies have started doing.

 

[daytripper]

thanks for the link cuzman, good review.
So, looks like many pci cards out now will be converted to
pci express x1 or higher in the near future... , interesting...
wonder what sound cards will use? x1, x4, or stay with regular pci?

There will be a transition from PCI to x1 PCI Express, both of which are
overkill for virtually anything to do with audio...

/daytripper

 

[joe~V~3838]

Hey Nightsky, that's the main reason I've asked this question and I don't
mind you
'hijacking' the thread !
I wonder when Creative will have a pci express x1, or x4 ? sound card ....
it would seem like the onboard sound would be putting a hurting on creative
but so far that hasn't been the case...

Creative have the new Audigy Zenith PCI-E 1x out in March 2005.

thanks richard , that's what I was wondering about ..... guess I'll just buy
that audigy 2 zs for $50 at best buy and just forget about getting the
'zenith' for awhile.......

 

[joe~V~3838]

hey daytripper

There will be a transition from PCI to x1 PCI Express, both of which are
overkill for virtually anything to do with audio...

/daytripper

are you sure that using pci e x1 for the new 'zenith' audio card due out in
march 2005 wouldn't be much of an improvement over the audigy 2 zs ?
I'm going to go and buy the audigy 2 zs at best buy today for $50 since
according to richard in a post above, the creative 'zenith' pci-e x1 sound card
won't be out until march 2005..that's to long to wait for me.

thanks everyone for the helpful info.....

 

[Mike]

hey daytripper

are you sure that using pci e x1 for the new 'zenith' audio card due out in
march 2005 wouldn't be much of an improvement over the audigy 2 zs ?

Read the extensive review at the same site referenced above:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/intel-9xx/index.x?pg=1

It goes into much detail about this topic. The answer to your
question is yes, it won't be much (or any) improvement.

 

[Richard Dower]

hey daytripper

There will be a transition from PCI to x1 PCI Express, both of which are
overkill for virtually anything to do with audio...

/daytripper

are you sure that using pci e x1 for the new 'zenith' audio card due out in
march 2005 wouldn't be much of an improvement over the audigy 2 zs ?
I'm going to go and buy the audigy 2 zs at best buy today for $50 since
according to richard in a post above, the creative 'zenith' pci-e x1 sound
card
won't be out until march 2005..that's to long to wait for me.

thanks everyone for the helpful info.....

The new Augigy card is based on whole new hardware/chip. It's totally
revised audio processing unit. New DAC's apparently increasing the S/N
ratio.

But Creative haven't really said anything concrete, though there are tidbits
on the net.

 

[daytripper]

hey daytripper


are you sure that using pci e x1 for the new 'zenith' audio card due out in
march 2005 wouldn't be much of an improvement over the audigy 2 zs ?
I'm going to go and buy the audigy 2 zs at best buy today for $50 since
according to richard in a post above, the creative 'zenith' pci-e x1 sound
card
won't be out until march 2005..that's to long to wait for me.

thanks everyone for the helpful info.....

The new Augigy card is based on whole new hardware/chip. It's totally
revised audio processing unit. New DAC's apparently increasing the S/N
ratio.

But Creative haven't really said anything concrete, though there are tidbits
on the net.

The data transfer rate of even a 33mhz 32-bit PCI bus peaks at roughly 120
MEGABYTES per second.

A decent sound channel might absorb as much as 22khz * wtf_lets_say_32bits_per
sample for a total of 88 KILOBYTES per second.

So a sound card that could manage 8 discrete 32-bit channels might pull a
grand total of 700 KILOBYTES per second, max.

Still think sound cards need the 512 Megabyte/second peak, uncooked data
transfer rate of PCI Express x1?

/daytripper
(There were reasons even ISA sound cards managed to do pretty well ;-)

 

[Richard Hopkins]

are you sure that using pci e x1 for the new 'zenith' audio card due
out in march 2005 wouldn't be much of an improvement over the
audigy 2 zs ?

That's an impossible question to answer Joe, mainly as the full feature set
of the Zenith hasn't been made public yet. It also depends rather a lot on
your definition of "much", doesn't it? There's no question that the extra
bandwidth offered by PCIe won't in itself make much of a difference, because
the regular PCI bus was more than enough for pretty much any audio
processing tasks.

Will the Zenith be a better card? Marketing alone would tend to dictate that
it will be better in various ways, on paper at least. It's unlikely to make
the A2 series (which are excellent in every way that matters) suddenly look
crap though.

I'm going to go and buy the audigy 2 zs at best buy today for $50
since according to richard in a post above, the creative 'zenith'
pci-e x1 sound card won't be out until march 2005..that's to long
to wait for me.

So go buy the A2ZS. It's an excellent card, and will continue to be so even
when the Zenith is launched.
--


Richard Hopkins
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
(replace .nospam with .com in reply address)

The UK's leading technology reseller www.dabs.com
Get the most out of your digital photos www.dabsxpose.com

 

[joe~V~3838]

That's an impossible question to answer Joe, mainly as the full feature set
of the Zenith hasn't been made public yet. It also depends rather a lot on
your definition of "much", doesn't it? There's no question that the extra
bandwidth offered by PCIe won't in itself make much of a difference, because
the regular PCI bus was more than enough for pretty much any audio
processing tasks.

Will the Zenith be a better card? Marketing alone would tend to dictate that
it will be better in various ways, on paper at least. It's unlikely to make
the A2 series (which are excellent in every way that matters) suddenly look
crap though.


So go buy the A2ZS. It's an excellent card, and will continue to be so even
when the Zenith is launched.

snip..

Thanks everyone for the advice, info and links about PCI E x1 ..
Way more info than I thought was out there....
So, I went and bought that A2 zs , and agree that it should be excellent
for years to come....
Now I'm just waiting on one of those new A64, PCI E mb , with sata,
to come out , then I'm getting rid of my trusty old bh6 1.01 mb ! heh
time to upgrade....

joe

 

[NightSky 421]

Now I'm just waiting on one of those new A64, PCI E mb , with sata,
to come out , then I'm getting rid of my trusty old bh6 1.01 mb ! heh
time to upgrade....

BH6? Wow, it will be a phenomenal upgrade once you get the Athlon 64! I
think you'll be quite happy.