Pci-x?

[Shmee150]

Ok, what is PCI-X?

In particular reference to this Asus mobo: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=337843

I have never seen those ports before and can't immediately find anything.

Sorry for being stupid!

Thanks,

ShMeE

[arthurleung]

PCI-X is a kind of PCI slot used for servers.

Normal PCI slots we use are 32Bit 33Mhz with a maximum bandwidth of 133MB/s

PCI-X (1.0) goes up to 64Bit 133Mhz which gives 1066MB/s

So that you could rack up 16 raptors and still not starve of bandwidth.

Mostly used for raid cards, fibre adapters, multi-port network cards and high end multi-channel hdtv capture cards or anything that is bandwidth demanding.

Not that its useful for 99% of the home users but abundunce of cheap 8+ port raid cards available on PCI-X unlike PCIe

[Shmee150]

Ahh ok, thanks, so not for me then

Thanks,

ShMeE

[aidanjt]

Naw, PCI-X is generally only used on servers, you get em on some workstation boards but they're largely unused, PCIe will probibly superceed it and buses (should, I hope) standardise somewhat.

[-ChEM-]

home-pc boards completely bypassed PCI-X as its not easy to implement electronically compared to normal PCI and PCI-e and no one ever REALLY needed it... its a shame given the amount of ex-enterprise cards like u160 scsi and now SATA ones getting sold for nothing on ebay

you can use them in a normal pci slot and theyll downclock to 32bit/33mhz

so that means 133mb/s max bandwidth instead of, say 533mb/s with 64bit/66mhz and that includes everything in the pci bus (cards but also a lot of onboard stuff sometimes) so its not really worth the effort compared to onboard pci-e