New Mobos less slots-cards obsolete? anyone explain?

[Anonymous]

The latest ASUS Pentium mobos talk about 2 different kinds of slots I guess in the specifications on their site. Ive made a couple of guesses though Im REALLY hoping some of the gurus here can fill me in. Im using up to 4 PCI cards in my p4p800 and i need to know if I should be thinking a firewire 1394b audio interface and then Id just have to worry about my 2 UAD-1 powered plugins music cards in the new mobos. I really need to extra processing power etc.

Heres what i see and have guessed.

1) PCI-expres is the new thing. urrently just for graphics though some mobos have 2 pci express slots and a couple of the older type?

2) eventually all of the older cards that fit in the older pci slots will go the way of ISA slots in really old PC. IE: phased out?

3) There are only say, 4 slots on the newest intel chipset mobos as the resources are taken up by things like 2 Firewire ports and stuff?

Do I make at least a C minus for my score on these assumtions?

BIG thanks..
WHAT a world we have!!!

best wishes.

 

[DarkElldar]

The new PCI-e slots run at 100 mhz vs. 33 mhz for PCI. PCI-e is a serial bus
rather than PCI being a parallel bus. PCI-e has "lanes" like a freeway each
lane is a separate bus to the chipset so it gives it very high bandwidth
when you run more than one lane to a device. Video uses 16 lanes the slots
can be 1,2,4,8 or 16 lanes. The bad thing is I have only seen 3 PCI slots on
PCI-e boards if you go with an nForce 3 or VIA KT800 based board you will
stll get 4-5 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot and be able to get the same
performance. You probably will be best to go with 1394b and a PCI-e board
with as many PCI slots available

PCI will hang in there for a while yet, there are not to many if any sound,
modem, NIC, TV tuner, or other PCI-e devices out there yet, USB ports came
out years before any USB devices did. But it will go the way of ISA.

USB and Firewire ports and other hardware will share the MB resources its
not like the "good old days" where we had to try to find open IRQ's and
DMA's and manually set them up.

 

[Ben Pope]

The latest ASUS Pentium mobos talk about 2 different kinds of slots I
guess in the specifications on their site. Ive made a couple of
guesses though Im REALLY hoping some of the gurus here can fill me
in. Im using up to 4 PCI cards in my p4p800 and i need to know if I
should be thinking a firewire 1394b audio interface and then Id just
have to worry about my 2 UAD-1 powered plugins music cards in the new
mobos. I really need to extra processing power etc.

Heres what i see and have guessed.

1) PCI-expres is the new thing. urrently just for graphics though
some mobos have 2 pci express slots and a couple of the older type?

That seems to be the general layout. The newest motherboards have a couple
of PCI-E, and a couple of PCI. PCI-E 16x is usually for graphics. There
are sound cards and other devices for PCI-E, but it's pretty new so there's
not that much available right now.

2) eventually all of the older cards that fit in the older pci slots
will go the way of ISA slots in really old PC. IE: phased out?

PCI-Express is essentially PCI, but it's serial over a differential pair
(like SATA or USB) and clocked higher. This means that you can easily
bridge PCI and PCI-Express, so don't expect PCI to disappear too quickly.

Incidentally, SATA has done for IDE (or more correctly, ATA) what USB did
for serial ports, and PCI-E is doing to PCI what SATA did for ATA. Serial
over a differential pair is the way forward, it allows much easier packaging
and reduced costs compared to parallel interfaces.

3) There are only say, 4 slots on the newest intel chipset mobos as
the resources are taken up by things like 2 Firewire ports and stuff?

Most of the support for things like Firewire tend to be built in the
chipset, and with ACPI (and APIC) resources are somewhat less of an issue
than they used to be. The number of PCI slots being reduced has probably
more to do with the quantity of onboard stuff and cost.

Do I make at least a C minus for my score on these assumtions?

I'll give you a C+!

Ben

 

[daytripper]

The new PCI-e slots run at 100 mhz vs. 33 mhz for PCI.

*Way* off the mark...

 

[Paul]

The latest ASUS Pentium mobos talk about 2 different kinds of
slots I guess in the specifications on their site. Ive made a
couple of guesses though Im REALLY hoping some of the gurus here
can fill me in. Im using up to 4 PCI cards in my p4p800 and i need
to know if I should be thinking a firewire 1394b audio interface
and then Id just have to worry about my 2 UAD-1 powered plugins
music cards in the new mobos. I really need to extra processing
power etc.

Heres what i see and have guessed.

1) PCI-expres is the new thing. urrently just for graphics though some

mobos have 2 pci express slots and a couple of the older type?

2) eventually all of the older cards that fit in the older pci slots

will go the way of ISA slots in really old PC. IE: phased out?

3) There are only say, 4 slots on the newest intel chipset mobos as the

resources are taken up by things like 2 Firewire ports and stuff?

Do I make at least a C minus for my score on these assumtions?

BIG thanks..
WHAT a world we have!!!

best wishes.

Get a P5P800. Same as P4P800, only it has a LGA775 socket for the
newer Intel processors. 5 PCI slots. Basically, you can move all
your old hardware over, and buy a new processor. Supports up to a
3.8GHz processor:

http://www.asus.com.tw/products/mb/socket775/p5p800/overview.htm
http://www.asus.com.tw/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx

Or, you could avoid upgrading until both audio cards and motherboards
are all PCI Express, and then make the transition. That could be a
long wait.

PCI Express uses a point to point interface, and that means less
compatibility issues when installing a new card in a new motherboard.
This is the only fuzzy picture of the packet format I've found yet:

http://www.esemagazine.co.uk/common/viewer/archive/2004/Jul/26/feature3.phtm

PCI Express has some other qualities as well. There is a separate
standard for switching PCI Express packets around, which allows
PCI Express to be used to build other products. The packets have
the capability to carry Quality of Service (QOS) bits, which would
allow streaming services or high priority traffic to be carried
across PCI Express. Exactly how this will be used in a computing
context remains to be seen.

As for 1394B, I think you should do some Google searches. One
problem I read about, is a driver issue. The Microsoft driver
cannot figure out that a 1394B runs at 800mbits/sec, and instead
runs the interface a lot slower. The normal 1394A runs just
fine. There are apparently third party drivers that will work
with 1394B, but until Microsoft figures out what they want to
do to fix this, you'd better continue to check Google, to see
how well 1394B works.

If you like ordinary PCI, and want to build a system with
many PCI cards, there are expansion boxes. The box connects
to your PC via a couple of bridge cards. These are too
expensive for home builders, but are an alternative for
a recording studio.

http://www.mobl.com/expansion/ (Magma PCI to PCI expansion)

HTH,
Paul