PCI - PCI-E Converters

[philehidiot]

Eh up guys and / or dolls....

I'm looking into the future now where my PC might get upgraded. Given the age of my Intel processor and the potential for this to become a bottleneck with the new exploit mitigations it might be that my next upgrade has to go all out and replace not just the GPU but the GPU, CPU, mobo and RAM. Given I have a watercooled CPU, I'm not amused as this'll likely not fit a more modern socket.

That aside, should I suddenly become wealthy enough to do this, one of the few components I'd like to keep would be my Soundblaster Elite Pro soundcard. This uses a standard PCI slot and there aren't exactly many mobos out there that would do everything I want them to do that sport one of these. I've seen converters that take a PCI-E x1 slot and convert it to a PCI slot. My question is does anyone have any experience as to whether these things work, if they require extra drivers and if said drivers are stable?

Or should I just accept that once again my perfectly good sound card is obselete and I'll have to fork out again? I also expect that a Windows 10 update is at some point going to render it useless as Creative aren't exactly very supportive with Windows 10 software for cards this old.

Cheers for any help.

[DanceswithUnix]

No direct experience, but it jogged a memory.

Converting PCIe to PCI will need a bridge chip which will introduce latency. From what I remember the Soundblaster cards hung on to PCI bus because their design didn't cope well with being on a PCIe bus so I have to wonder if it would work badly.

Edit: There are still some motherboards with PCI slots on them. Like this AM4 socket one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-Prime-.../dp/B06X9LN311

[Pob255]

There's intel based motherboards with pci too eg https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/mainb...i-z370-pc-pro/

[philehidiot]

Cheers both. I suspect when my upgrade time comes around I'll be stuck with no mobos that fulfill other vital criteria having a PCI slot. At the moment it's still possible and (s)he who prances with Unix does seem to fit with other issues I've heard.

It's just frustrating when sound cards really rarely have any kind of monumental breakthrough and you end up sitting on a great card which just won't work anymore. It's like having an amazing telly and then analogue being switched off and there being no way to convert / adapt.

I think perhaps I'll look at if the prices of the adaptors are cheap enough to make it worth a punt. Then expect not to work and then I won't be disappointed when it doesn't. Plan for the worst. Only problem is that a replacement was a few hundred quid last time I looked. Not small change for someone in my position.

[DanceswithUnix]

Cheers both. I suspect when my upgrade time comes around I'll be stuck with no mobos that fulfill other vital criteria having a PCI slot. At the moment it's still possible and (s)he who prances with Unix does seem to fit with other issues I've heard.

It's just frustrating when sound cards really rarely have any kind of monumental breakthrough and you end up sitting on a great card which just won't work anymore. It's like having an amazing telly and then analogue being switched off and there being no way to convert / adapt.

I think perhaps I'll look at if the prices of the adaptors are cheap enough to make it worth a punt. Then expect not to work and then I won't be disappointed when it doesn't. Plan for the worst. Only problem is that a replacement was a few hundred quid last time I looked. Not small change for someone in my position.

Out of interest, what motherboard are you currently running?

For some years PCI lanes have been off the chipset which is basically hanging off PCIe lanes from the processor so they are already on a PCI/PCIe bridge. You may already be proving that it can work.

[philehidiot]

I'm using an Asus Z97-A-USB31, revision 1. BIOS 2801 (date 11/11/2015).

[Dashers]

I wanted to do a similar thing many years ago. I turned the problem round and upgraded my sound-card first to a PCIe one before having to face the costs of upgrading the rest of the rig. Might not work for you though.

[Zak33]

the issue with older cards, isn't the slot it fits into ....

its the drivers.

you get a new motherboard...it only has drivers for Win 10 for example...and the sound card doesn't have Win10 support.

game over