PCI Express?

[Christo]

so with PCI express.... AGP is gone yeah? this means that in place of the
AGP slot there will be a PCI Express slot?

Also PCI Express x16 has a larger slot than PCI Express x1

I have yet to see any boards with PCI Express on but i have came accross
this...

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=601

so if i was to purchase a PCI express GFX card would it have to be PCI x16
or PCI express x1?

or could i purchase a middle range (i am assuming there is a PCI express 4x,
and place it into the PCI express 16x slot.... which I am assuming is going
to be largest of the slots (the one that looks as if it has been put where
an AGP slot would go)

i am not too sure about PCI express and would really just like some general
info on what is compatable with it.... i did read somewhere that ordinary
PCI devices would run on PCI express

however i am not too sure about PCI express x1 and x16 whats the difference
other than speed?

can i place lower spec devices in the x16 slots or not? are the slots bigger
etc?

any info at all would be much appreciated! i just wanna hear it from the
horses mouth so to speak rather than read it on a website and perhaps
intrepret it wrong.

dont wanna go fiddling around with expensive gear if i dont know what it is.

 

[Cuzman]

" so with PCI express.... AGP is gone yeah? this means that in place of the
AGP slot there will be a PCI Express slot? "


http://compreviews.about.com/od/general/a/PCIExpressIntro.htm

 

[Glitch]

so with PCI express.... AGP is gone yeah? this means that in place of the
AGP slot there will be a PCI Express slot?

Yes AGP will probably be gone in 2-3 years but there will still be old
computers that will use it.

I have yet to see any boards with PCI Express on

There all kinds of boards with PCI-Express on them.The Motherboards with
Intel 915 and 925 Chipsets and Motherboards with nForce4 chipsets all have
PCI-Express.

so if i was to purchase a PCI express GFX card would it have to be PCI x16
or PCI express x1?

Graphic Cards are made only for PCI-Express x16 not for PCI-Express x1.
PCI-Express x1 is made for sound and network cards,etc.

or could i purchase a middle range (i am assuming there is a PCI express 4x,
and place it into the PCI express 16x slot.... which I am assuming is going
to be largest of the slots (the one that looks as if it has been put where
an AGP slot would go)

There is no such thing as a PCI-Express x4 slot

i did read somewhere that ordinary PCI devices would run on PCI express

Ordinary PCI devices won't run on PCI-Express that's why on PCI-Express
motherboards you also have 2-3 PCI slots.

can i place lower spec devices in the x16 slots or not? are the slots bigger
etc?

Yes x16 slot is bigger than x1 slot and you can't put nothing other than
Graphics card in x16.

 

[Noozer]

Graphic Cards are made only for PCI-Express x16 not for PCI-Express x1.

PCI-Express x1 is made for sound and network cards,etc.

But this doesn't have to be the case...

There is no such thing as a PCI-Express x4 slot

Sure there is... I know I've seen it in the specs. Not sure what the point
is though.

Yes x16 slot is bigger than x1 slot and you can't put nothing other than
Graphics card in x16.

Wrong... Hard drive controllers, etc. can also use the 16bit slot. It's not
just for video cards.

 

[Christo]

But this doesn't have to be the case...



Sure there is... I know I've seen it in the specs. Not sure what the point
is though.


Wrong... Hard drive controllers, etc. can also use the 16bit slot. It's
not
just for video cards.

wont that make a really really massive hard drive controller? it will allow
multiple connections to the one slot... so itll be like a connection into
the pci express x16 slot and then say 2 ATA slots mounted onto that?

thats what i done get... why plug a hdd into a massive slot? and why plug
hdd controlers into massive slots, why not just scrap the slot and devlop a
way of linking them directly to the PCI x16 bus or is that what you are
saying?

 

[Glitch]

thats what i done get... why plug a hdd into a massive slot? and why plug
hdd controlers into massive slots, why not just scrap the slot and devlop a
way of linking them directly to the PCI x16 bus or is that what you are
saying?

I think he was wrong about that part.All the new PCI-Express motherboards
have 4 S-ATA controllers nad 2-4 ATA controllers.There is no way you can
plug a HDD controller into PCI-Express x16.

 

[Noozer]

devlop
I think he was wrong about that part.All the new PCI-Express motherboards
have 4 S-ATA controllers nad 2-4 ATA controllers.There is no way you can
plug a HDD controller into PCI-Express x16.

Never seen a RAID controller?

My friend has eight 250gig Maxtor drives on a 133Mhz PCI-X RAID controller
and is looking at another eight drives in the near future. Show me an
onboard controller that can do this.

 

[Cuzman]

" My friend has eight 250gig Maxtor drives on a 133Mhz PCI-X RAID
controller and is looking at another eight drives in the near future. Show
me an onboard controller that can do this. "


But PCI-X is not the same as PCI-Express. On server boards with PCI-X,
there is also an AGP port for the graphics. It is generally considered that
you would never want eight hard drives in a desktop system, so I sincerely
doubt that PCI-Express will be used for anything other than graphics. After
all, was AGP used for anything else?

 

[Noozer]

" My friend has eight 250gig Maxtor drives on a 133Mhz PCI-X RAID
controller and is looking at another eight drives in the near future. Show
me an onboard controller that can do this. "

But PCI-X is not the same as PCI-Express. On server boards with PCI-X,
there is also an AGP port for the graphics. It is generally considered that
you would never want eight hard drives in a desktop system, so I sincerely
doubt that PCI-Express will be used for anything other than graphics. After
all, was AGP used for anything else?

But you're missing the point... A 16 bit PCI-e slot is not just for video
cards. It's for anything high bandwidth. There's no reason that a hard drive
controller or even a high end LAN card couldn't go in there. The only reason
he went with PCI-X is that PCI-e didn't exist yet. (BTW, most PCI-X boards
have onboard video and no AGP - it was a bit of work to find a decent board
that had PCI-X and AGP for dual Opterons.)

When AGP came around it was just another PCI bus dedicated to graphics. Over
time it got faster, etc. It wasn't called PCI because it was graphics only.

BTW, the only diference between a server and desktop system is what you do
with it, no the hardware it's built with.