PCI Express [New Chipset/CPU Architectures] & Legacy Gear

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mark4man

mark4man

MoonMix Studios
People,

Perusing my latest edition of PC Magazine (August), I came across an article entitled: "A New Era For Desktops." The article discusses the new Intel 64-Bit ready Chipset releases (915 & 925); and the various innovative technological improvements associated with the new bus, storage, memory & graphics architectures.

One of the biggest improvements is the development of PCI Express, which is the new high-speed serial bus connection...w/ a wire-pair transfer rate of 2 GBps (upstream & downstream); & a total bandwidth of 500 MBps (all this in comparison to the existing parallel connection PCI bus, w/ a universal total bandwidth of 133 MBps.)

Aside from the obvious improvements for PC recordists who grab one of these new machines, I was wondering:

1) Would existing PCI Cards from industry typical Audio Interfaces continue to work with this new architecture...would the existing Cards benefit from the improvements...or would we (& the industry) all be forced to upgrade?

2) Have any PC recording technical sources examined these new systems yet; & published findings (& if so...where are they)?

Thanks very much,

mark4man
 
PC products tend to evolve, so it's highly likely there will still be normal pci and agp slots on motherboards for some time to come.
When it's decided to remove "legacy" interfaces - the video will also use pci express. So there will still be the opportunity for gamers video cards to hog the bus -even though there is more than enough bandwidth. It is not the speed of the bus but the "slot" being available on time that causes problems for our real-time audio streams, and there should be more than enough bandwidth in what we have now!

Interesting thead over in the SoS PC forum...
http://sound-on-sound2.infopop.net/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=215094572&f=351097254&m=150108472
...all about pci bus latency.
 
PCI cards won't work in PCI express slots.

It's going to be a bumpy ride the next few years, as the desktop PC evolves with BTX, PCI Express, DDR2, and SATA 2.

I am doing 3 final upgrades to my box.....3200+ cpu, another 512MB of RAM, and a new video card; and that's it for awhile.

Windows XP and any programs that run on it will perform fine for me with that config. And Longhorn isn't coming out until 2006, and I probably won't upgrade to it until the following year.
 
Jim Y said:
Interesting thead over in the SoS PC forum...
http://sound-on-sound2.infopop.net/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=215094572&f=351097254&m=150108472
...all about pci bus latency.
Click to expand...

Yeah there's some real good stuff in there.

It does seem to imply though that if you do reduce latency on the agp bus and so resolve any glitching issues you may be having on your pci card, PCI Express is not going to add any real benefit to a DAW.

As you say, there's more than enough bandwidth on the existing pci bus for audio work as long as everyone shares nicely.

I have no latency issues currently with my delta 44. My problem is cpu constraint. Even my overclocked 2.8 P4 struggles once I throw more than around 20 plugins into a 24 track mix
 
Jim Y, Polaris20 & Bulls Hit,

Thanks very much. Good info all the way around.

I'll probably beef up my RAM & hunker down with the 'ol existing machine, myself.

mark4man
 
I recently upgraded my PC from an ancient configuration of a Intel Celleron 766 Mhz with 380 MB of SDRAM to a, 3.2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 with 1 GB DDRAM (Dual Chanel) and the Motherboard is completely PCI Express. I was forced to upgrade my Echo Mia MIDI soundcard to a Hybrid card which is compatable to both... My soundcard should arrive Wednesday...

Without the card back, I've noticed an amazing speed improvement thus far, and my CPU usage is WAY down from before...

So far, I'm a fan of the newer Chipset... but until my Mia MIDI returns, I can't give a solid response.
 
Change of Poets...
Are you sure what you have is pci express? Is it not pci X?
Not too sure, but I thought pci X is the same kind of slot, but an extra layer of fingers on the edge connector. Older cards, provided they don't require 5volt sit higher and miss the extra connections (for 64bit i/o). The modification to older cards which M-audio and the like are doing is making sure they work on the high or low voltage and sit properly in the modified slots, so they are still 32bit parallel pci. A lower operating voltage means the bus and the cards can run at 66Mhz if they can, but older types will access at the old 33Mhz.

PCI Express is serial and therefore needs far fewer connections and can go even faster - it'll look completely different.

It is confusing though. Am I right?
 
Jim Y said:
Change of Poets...
Are you sure what you have is pci express? Is it not pci X?
Not too sure, but I thought pci X is the same kind of slot, but an extra layer of fingers on the edge connector. Older cards, provided they don't require 5volt sit higher and miss the extra connections (for 64bit i/o). The modification to older cards which M-audio and the like are doing is making sure they work on the high or low voltage and sit properly in the modified slots, so they are still 32bit parallel pci. A lower operating voltage means the bus and the cards can run at 66Mhz if they can, but older types will access at the old 33Mhz.

PCI Express is serial and therefore needs far fewer connections and can go even faster - it'll look completely different.

It is confusing though. Am I right?
Click to expand...
Yes, it is PCI Express which is also called PCI-X (3.3 volt as opposed to 5 volt)

Echo isn't modifying the card at all, I sent the old card in, and they're sending me a brand new PCI-X card for a nominal fee... as my older card was under warranty.

I just purchased the new PC 2 weeks ago.
 
Well, it's muddy as hell out there, but I think I got it right.
Click on the diagrams and pics in this article...
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1152242,00.asp
...you'll see pci Express looks quite different. The slots can be different sizes as it seems more than one serial channel can be used to increase speed. The basic x1 PCI Express slot is very short compared to PCI or PCI-X.

PCI-X though, looks like PCI and is similar and is NOT PCI Express.
PCI-X is also on the new Mac G5.
Because of confusion, some are calling PCI Express PCI-E to differentiate from PCI-X more easily.

The modification for PCI-X is probably not done to existing cards, but all it amounts to is fitting 3.3volt, 5volt-tolerant componants in an existing pci card design. These cards will then work when fitted in a PCI-X slot but DO NOT gain extra performance, and still work in an old 5volt PCI slot. M-Audio has done this with their entire range of Delta PCI cards - they look no different.
They probably didn't need to change much as the Envy24 audio controller and AK converters already were 3.3v/5v tolerant.
 
PCI-X = PCI Extended
PCI-E = PCI Express

PCI-X will work with older PCI cards.
PCI-E will NOT work with any PCI or PCI-X cards. It's an entirely different connector.

Right now only graphics and some network cards are available for PCI-E. It's the replacement for AGP currently. In fact, I think AGP is pretty much dead. I'm not seeing new boards with AGP at all right now. In the future, PCI may be completely replaced with PCI-E. But not for awhile.

I believe PCI-E audio cards are probably a few years out still. Probably will hit around the same time as the 64-bit chipsets come down in price and Windows gets Longhorn out.
 
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