[Athens]

3 Questions about PCI-X

Q. how people in the forum see the pci-x cards being used in the future?

My Answer within a year there should be PCI-X Video Cards

Q. who benefits from them?

My Answer Hard cord video gamers, highend servers, professionals in the graphic or music industry.

Q. will we see graphics cards in them in the near future? how long will it take to see ADC compatible cards in those slots?

Again I think about a year.


Any one else want to poke some guesses about PCI-X

[Eug Wanker]

AGP 8X Pro is for the high-end video types. PCI-X is not.

Now what I wonder is if you stick a standard 33 MHz PCI card in one of the 100 MHz PCI-X slots if both 100 MHz slots slow down to 33 MHz, or if Apple has made the slots independent.

It would seem the 3rd slot is independent at 133 MHz, but I wonder if the two 100 MHz slots are independent from each other too or not.

[Axo1ot1]

Well in the short term I think PCI-X is overkill. A lot of people don't realise how much bandwidth PCI really has. if you have a CinéWave card and an ULTRA SCSI RAID you can move HD video around like butter or do multiple streams of uncompressed (including RGBA). I'm really excited to see what happens with PCI-X, but I don't think PCI has been a bottleneck for anything other than graphics cards.

[-Q-]

Anyone have any good links for PCI-X? I'm off to do a Google search but if anyone has any good links on the technical designs and benchmarking, I'd appreciate it.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by Athens:
3 Questions about PCI-X

Q. how people in the forum see the pci-x cards being used in the future?

My Answer within a year there should be PCI-X Video Cards

Q. who benefits from them?

My Answer Hard cord video gamers, highend servers, professionals in the graphic or music industry.

Q. will we see graphics cards in them in the near future? how long will it take to see ADC compatible cards in those slots?

Again I think about a year.


Any one else want to poke some guesses about PCI-X

You're thinking of PCI Express. Completely different tech. PCI-X is a really beefy PCI slot, that's all.

[digital_dreamer]

Originally posted by -Q-:
Anyone have any good links for PCI-X? I'm off to do a Google search but if anyone has any good links on the technical designs and benchmarking, I'd appreciate it.

Try these two links: PCI-X specifications and PCI-X FAQs.

Hope it helps.

regards,
MAJ

[JB72]

Originally posted by Axo1ot1:
Well in the short term I think PCI-X is overkill. A lot of people don't realise how much bandwidth PCI really has.

Well the Indigita 4 channel firewire 800 card could certainly use the bandwidth. It would certainly make for a couple of nice external RAID pairs.

[Link]

The firewire 800 card you speak of can really haul a55 though.. when you connect all 4 plugs to another computer that has the card you get a full 3.2gbps pipeline :mountain of drool:

Not too shabby I say. Divide into bytes and you get a rate that is actually higher then that of UW320
... If I'm not mistaken.. 400MB/sec.. Impressive if that is true.

[-Q-]

Originally posted by digital_dreamer:
Try these two links: PCI-X specifications and PCI-X FAQs.

Hope it helps.

regards,
MAJ

Thanks! Very helpful!!

[Graymalkin]

PCI-X is very useful for high end workstations that need lots of high bandwidth periphrials. If you've got a 66MHz PCI 2.1 bus you've got 266MB/s of bandwidth to throw around. You might think that's plenty because it can feed a UW320 SCSI card or CinéWave video accelerator. While 266MB/s is a lot of bandwidth, that has to be chared over all the devices on that bus. Multiple CinéWave accelerators, an UW320 SCSI card with a Myranet adapter, or maybe an additional 3D accelerator aren't going to live well on that small of a bus however. PCI-X devices also speak in a much more efficient way than older PCI devices which allows for much more of the maximum 1GB/s of bandwith to be utilized for useful operations.

The G5's PCI-X bus can feed periphrials that current PowerMacs could not even think of using. This is a very good thing for the G5, it is much more of a viable replacement for much more expensive Unix machines than current PowerMacs.