PCI-e Rant [Archive] - XtremeSystems Forums

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SamHughe

11-03-2005, 06:50 PM

[BEGIN RANT]
I am sick and tired of seeing those goddamn PCI-e 1x-4x slots in the latest motherboards. Why mobo manufacturers keep screwing up their designs just to fit a pci-e 1x or 4x slot into the mobo (in most cases both). Is it actually that important to have a PCI-e 4x slot? Tell me one...just one product that utilizes pci-e 1x/4x slot. STOP!!! I know what you gonna do! Let me tell you before you google it and find out there is a matrox card using pci-e 1x. I don’t care about some lame-ass card that average comp user don’t even know it’s exist. The bottom line is since the intel 9xx series mobos, we’ve been waiting for some fast pci-e1x/4x soundcards, tv tuners etc. Something that we (average PC users ) can take advantage of a faster bus. Nothing has arrived yet! Then why the fuk are mobo manufacturers still trying to include this sh(i)t into the mobo design? Don’t tell me that “future proof” crap again. I don’t buy it. Just like the 64bit crap and dual-core crap by the time software start taking advantage of all this technology your shiny A64 will be as useless as a Pentium 133 with Hyper –treading. Even Intel 9xx mobos are almost outdated. I hope some manufacturer soon figure out this and produce a mobo without any pci-e 1x/4x slot, or integrated soundcard so we can have only what we need. [END OF THE RANT]

n00b 0f l337

11-03-2005, 06:53 PM

Erm the pci-e4x for the p5wd2 is for crossfire.

Sentential

11-03-2005, 08:47 PM

Ive seen a RAID card use PCI-E 8X. Ive never even seen a 8X slot before...go figure :stick: I frankly feel they should just axe the half this and quarter that nonsense and just make all 16X slots.

Ugly n Grey

11-03-2005, 10:10 PM

speed bump

11-03-2005, 10:12 PM

cirthix

11-04-2005, 02:41 AM

there is a pcie raid card, but it costs an arm and a leg. 15krpm drives are quite nice, but they are definitely limited by pci if you have more than one of them.

Ugly n Grey

11-04-2005, 06:03 AM

We could do all x16 slots but by then your bridges would be bigger than you CPU. One word for PCI-e 4x though Ultra 320 SCSI with 15k drives right now the only reason that SATA can beat SCSI is higher bus speed PCI-e 4x I believe would smoke allow U320 to smoke sata.

UHM.... that's just not true :stick:

SCSI drives spin faster, have higher internal AND external transfer rates and U320 is only one SCSI transport mechanism... fibre channel storage array anyone...

SATA II drives aren't close to their big brothers yet....and new SCSI standards are being released as we speak. Consumer grade hard drives are just that... consumer grade.. slower and more likely to break....

In other words, my SCSI drives are faster than SATA II drives in every single test, not just one test... :woot:

SamHughe

11-04-2005, 07:35 AM

I use an 8x SCSI RAID controller.... I am interested in the 1x and 4x video products as well, I hated AGP from the day it was launched, it was just a patch but it kept PCI-X from being adopted on consumer grade boads. PCI/AGP is just old legacy crap now. I truly do appreciate the simplicity and performance of PCI-E.

Which scsi card are you using Ugly? I've got two 15K RPM scsi drives and I'd love to be able to use them in my gaming rig. My old board (Supermicro P4SCT+II) supports pci-x and the performance difference between 2xRaptors on RAid0 and 2x15KHitachi Drives was immense! Having said that I still don't think there are enough PCI-e 1x-4x products in the market to justify the existence of pci-e 1x/4x slots in mobos targeting average PC user (which excludes you Ugly).

Ugly n Grey

11-04-2005, 08:21 AM

I tried the Intel SRCU42E but I ended up liking the LSI MegaRAID SCSI 320-2E better for two channel solutions. But next gen sound, SATA RAID, Video, TV cards etcc are comin out in 1x and 4x flavours.

No offense to anyone, but i'm going to comment from a PC history perspective. I have had this conversation about the relevancy of new revision bus slots on every single release of a new BUS since the introduction of the 286 on Compuserve and local BBS before the internet too.. (I'm purposely skipping over the 80186 as it never really took off)

The 286 intro.... what do we need those 16 bit slots for, they are a waste of space. At least you can plug eight bit cards in them.

MCA slots .... I hate that these things are not compatible with ISA, but I like just plugging them in and forgetting them.

VESA... what do we need these for? At least you can plug 16 bit cards in them.

PCI slots- Why do we need these for? i thought this was for fileservers?

AGP- who needs this? The PCI bus is already under utilized

PCI-E... well you get the picture..

I skipped EISA and PCI-X because they never really made it into consumer grade hardware (though I wish like heck PCI-X had made it instead of that stupid AGP thingy, that was a piece of bastard technology if I ever saw one)

Anyhow, you get the point...

crodan85

11-04-2005, 08:24 AM

A PCI-E 1X Tv tuner card
http://www.powercolor.com/global/product_theater550pro_pcie.html

SamHughe

11-04-2005, 06:35 PM

I tried the Intel SRCU42E but I ended up liking the LSI MegaRAID SCSI 320-2E

Wow! Only 800 bucks!

No offense to anyone, but i'm going to comment from a PC history perspective. I have had this conversation about the relevancy of new revision bus slots on every single release of a new BUS [/QUOTE]

None taken (at least by me) but let me ask you this: how long did it take manifacturers to produce PCI cards when it was first introduced? PCI-E bus finalized in 2002 we're almost in 2006 you know. Ok I admit, If you buy a mobo this year you can maybe be able to use a pci1x/4x card before your mobo become obsolete. I don't think you can say the same for a Intel 915 series mobo though.