PCI to stay for a long time it seems...

[Nowhere]

Look at the this post (and later)

It seems like PCIe is...bad for certain things . So it looks like PCI will stay.
Not that I mind...I mean, is there anything bad, conceptually, about it besides "slow" transfer?

[Gurm]

Not that I know of. I don't think that having a PCI bus on your machine makes it inherently slower or anything.

[Nowhere]

(besides, I just realized, we still, technically, have ISA in PCs, right?)

[Wombat]

PCI will probably linger just like ISA did. PCI-E may be "inefficient" at certain tasks, but it brings so much more bandwidth to the table, even at PCI-Ex1, it shouldn't matter. Besides, the people saying this won't even realize their PCI bus is just a controller chip hanging off a PCI-Ex1 channel.

[Kooldino]

Dumb question:
I have no experience with PCI Ex...but can I use current PCI cards in PCI Ex slots/mobos?

I'd really like to reuse my PVR250 in my next machine.

[High_Jumbllama]

They do have some PCI slots but not in the PCI Express slots.

[DGhost]

PCI will probably linger just like ISA did. PCI-E may be "inefficient" at certain tasks, but it brings so much more bandwidth to the table, even at PCI-Ex1, it shouldn't matter. Besides, the people saying this won't even realize their PCI bus is just a controller chip hanging off a PCI-Ex1 channel.

I can understand that PCIe would have issues running several of the same applications as PCI, but... what the hell? I really don't think those people know what they are talking about...

they talk about how PCI express is inefficent when small transfers and/or concurrent read/writes are used, but... PCI express is a full duplex point-to-point packet based architecture that looks (paper-wise) to be perfect for audio streaming, especially since it implements QoS features that would allow the stream to go un-interrupted by background traffic.

i mean... i guess i have a hard time with where he comes up with his logic in that argument... he talks about control packets returning regularly... from what? the ****ing speakers?

sure, PCIe will have issues with traditional hardware/software design schemes, but it certainly looks like it would be more in line with how audio should be handled. as long as you get away from trying to do things the "old fashioned" way it shouldn't be too bad.

[Fluff]

http://www.rme-audio.de/techinfo/nforce4_tests.htm

Read that.

[DGhost]

http://www.rme-audio.de/techinfo/nforce4_tests.htm

Read that.

uhhh... right....

he is complaining that legacy PCI sound cards perform poorly when used over a PCI->PCIe bridge chip. and that FireWire audio devices perform poorly over FireWire->PCI host devices attached to PCI-PCIe bridge chips. especially when paired with a first generation PCIe chipset doing other PCIe I/O data transfers at the same time.

you likely will see issues just because of the differences in architectures. if he was talking about a PCIe native sound card in a PCIe system, I would be a lot more suprised.

[rylan]

Dumb question:
I have no experience with PCI Ex...but can I use current PCI cards in PCI Ex slots/mobos?

I'd really like to reuse my PVR250 in my next machine.

No, PCI and PCIexpress are not electrically or mechanically compatible slots.
However there will be PCI slots available on motherboards for a long time anyway.


Yes, PCI-express is extremely innneficiant. They try to make up for it by the high bandwidth and serial clock rates... think Rambus but nowhere near as crappy an implementation.
The instruction overhead is silly when transferring small or random data packets though.
Anyway there isn't really any need to transition a soundcard to pci express, as the existing PCI bus is fine, and its taken them long enough to get that implementation correct. Also, try hanging a big Audigy off a pci-ex 1x slot and see how long it takes for the card to warp or break. The mechanical design for a 1x slot leaves a lot to be desired unless the card is very small.

[Marshmallowman]

I think their are going to plenty of good PCI-ex audio gear, I just don't count on creative being able to come up with a effiecient PCI-ex solution quickly...it took them long enough to sort out their standard PCI gear.

I would think a pci-ex 1x would be plenty for a sound card, and gven that you typically have 20 lanes of pci-ex , a high utilisation on one of them is not going to be a problem, and I don't think a good design is going to have a high utilisation anyway(eg not a creative design)

I would take discussions on computer hardware in audio forums with a pinch of salt (make that a pound of salt)

[DGhost]

I can see PCIe being inefficent when handling small amounts of data, but inefficency does not nessicarily translate into poor performance. it just means that the metaphorical signal-to-noise ratio is low.

and no, i don't trust creative to come up with a decent PCIe design for quite a while. they spend too much time re-using existing designs that it would cost too much to go out and engineer it from the ground up.

[Dr Mordrid]

The PCI-PCIe bridge on my system works well with the TBSC falls on its arse with the RT.X100, which really hammers PCI to host memory bandwidth. Too bad, but then it's for SD editing and HD is the current thing

Dr. Mordrid

[Admiral]

I have a VIA VT8237 southbridge
(ducks for cover)

[VJ]

(besides, I just realized, we still, technically, have ISA in PCs, right?)

Yep, there was a period during which there were no new mainboards with ISA slots, but now there are Pentium4 mainboards with ISA slots.
The main reason is that an ISA card is very easy to make, and there are quite a number of custom made ISA boards in use (hospital equipment, ...). As these cards are extremely low volume, there is no chance they will be made in PCI versions. Having new mainboards with ISA slots allows the PC's controlling the equipment (via the custom card) to be upgraded.


I wonder: does PCI-X have similar issues?
I mean, it goes up to 133 MHz, 64 bit... and is compatible with PCI. But how does it behave with small data?


Jörg