pci express?

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foreverain4

New member
ok, can someone please explain this to me? it is supposed to be faster than regular pci? but the slot is smaller. (x1) ? would there be a disadvantage to running a firewire card off of a x1 slot?
 
PCI express and PCI is like comparing SATA and ATA.

just like SATA, PCI Express is a two way serial connection as opposed to traditional PCI which is parallel. While PCI is at 133MBps throughput, you can get about 200MBps with PCI Express. PCI Express was originally developed so that high-speed connections such as Firewire B, USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet would have an I/O suitable for their speeds.
 
so, a pci express x1 slot, would have better performance than a standard pci slot? the reason i am asking is cuz i got a new compy for audio editing. i am wondering if it would be worth getting a new pci express firewire card, i if i should just use the standard pci firewire card that i already have. i mainly use external hard drives off the firewire connection.
 
Yes, a 1x pci-e is faster than a standard pci. A single pci-e lane is 2.5Gbps (about 250MBps) dedicated while a pci is 130MBps shared between the whole bus. If you can find pci-e firewire cards...
 
like i said, the PCI Express was created for faster connections like 1394b. Most firewire audio gear is 1394a (the slower of the two). How fast your throughput is will be determined by the slowest connection in the chain. Since firewire is going to be slower than your PCI bus anyway, I doubt you'll see much of a difference anyway. I'd say just settle with a traditional PCI card with 1394a and you'll be fine. Many many people use it with no problems. Of course, when the time comes and througput on cables gets faster, you can upgrade then.
 
given the pci bus shares bandwidth between slots, and pci-e is dedicated, (as stated above) would it not do me good to get the firewire card off the standard pci buss, leaving more bandwidth for my motu and uad 1?
 
foreverain4 said:
given the pci bus shares bandwidth between slots, and pci-e is dedicated, (as stated above) would it not do me good to get the firewire card off the standard pci buss, leaving more bandwidth for my motu and uad 1?
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yeah, that would make sense

really i see it all as being nickles and dimes. a little bit here and there can help you, but the PCI latency is probably one of the last things you will have problems with in your computer. CPU power, memory, hard drive speed/throughput etc. is more taxing on your computer than the information going to and from your PCI cards is. Just my opinion though.
 
bennychico11 said:
yeah, that would make sense

but the PCI latency is probably one of the last things you will have problems with in your computer. CPU power, memory, hard drive speed/throughput etc. is more taxing on your computer than the information going to and from your PCI cards is.QUOTE]

even 24 tracks of audio, and a dsp card on the buss?
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Don't know about dsp cards except creamware pulsar. That is the worst card to have on a pci bus. It can bring your pci bus down faster than anything else.

As for 24 channels... even if you count 24 in and out, that makes 48channels x 4bytes x 96000samples/sec=18.432.000 bytes/sec. That won't be hard on your bus.
 
assuming you're doing 24 channels at once though. even if you have 24 track in you software program, they will be summed to stereo before leaving the computer. so it's only 2 channels out. Most people at home won't run 24 tracks simultaneously out of their soundcard (not a lot of soundcards support up to 24). You'll mostly see it at recording studios with HD systems or similar.
 
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