P4C800-E Deluxe and PCI Express

In article , Slow Lazy Dog
wrote:

I have a P4C800-E Deluxe that's just about 4 or 5 months old. I built
a new sys with a P4 2.4ghz, 512MGB of PC3200 and twi SATA 120GB hdd's.

The only thing I didn't upgrade was my video card, an ATI 9000 Pro
128. After installing The Simpsons-Hit and Run. I found out my
vidcard isn't supported even with all the latest driver updates.
So... time to put the 9000 Pro on the shelf and move on. Which leads
me to PCI Express. This MB doesn't support it... does Asus make a MB
comparable to the P4C800-E Deluxe in terms of features with PCI
Express support? Any recommendations if they don't?

Thanks for any input.

SLD

DirectX 8.1 hardware support and T&L.
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon90...pro/index.html

http://www.vugames.com/product.do?gamePlatformId=424
System Requirements
Minimum Requirements:
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
PIII 700 MHZ or equivalent
192 MB of ram
4X speed CD or DVD drive
32 MB DirectX 8.1 hardware T&L video card (Geforce 2+)
1.2 GB HD space
DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
Keyboard and Mouse

That means it should work.

Did you install:

1) Chipset drivers ? Something like INFINST.exe or the like.
In Device Manager, (system section?) you'll see

Intel(R) 82875P Processor to AGP Controller - 2579

That means the chipset driver got installed for the AGP
interface.

2) Catalyst driver. Get the latest from ATI.
It consists of a video card driver, and a control panel.
If, in your Display control, you see a "SmartGART" tab,
that means both the driver and control panel component
installed OK.

3) Microsoft DirectX. It is hard to say what minimum version
the game you want to play requires. While Microsoft thinks
people should always upgrade, my experience is, older games
will malfunction on you, if you use more modern versions,
so which version you upgrade to, is a personal decision. I
would think 8.1, as listed in the above requirements, would
be the minimum to take advantage of all hardware features.
The Catalyst installer may have something to say about this
as well.

Now, once all this stuff is installed, get a copy of Powerstrip:
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

The options menu item, from the Powerstrip taskbar popup, shows
what options are enabled or disabled. And, that will help tell
you whether everything really is enabled on your combined
hardware and software.

In my case, I have a system disk that started as win98, upgraded
to win98se, upgraded to win2k, moved through three hardware
upgrades, and no matter how much installing and uninstalling I
did, I could not get the AGP texture transfer working on my
ATI 9800Pro. A clean install of the OS fixed everything up fine.

*******

Your plan to upgrade to PCI Express will not change the mundane
realities above. There will still be drivers to install, and
software to fight with.

The P4GD1 will be the least cost upgrade for you, as you
get to reuse most of your hardware. It doesn't seem to be
a North American product, and may appear in other markets.
There is little mention of it that I can find, in Google.

http://www.asus.com.tw/products/mb/s...1/overview.htm
http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock...1675_p4gd1.pdf

The P5AD2 family would be the most expensive way to go.
LGA775 processor socket (so your S478 processor won't fit).
DDR2 memory. See the top items on the list on this page:

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/mbindex.htm

Have a look through the other P5xxx products, and you may
find the right compromise set of technologies for your budget
and plans.

Stuffing a fat-ass AGP card in your current computer will
also fix this problem (i.e. the need to upgrade could be
satisfied quite well, using the P4C800-E, so at least for
the moment, you have quite a good base to build on. You
can stuff a 3.4GHz socket 478 Prescott processor in there
if you want.) There are AGP cards with very similar core
and memory clocks at the moment, to the PCI Express cards,
and the AGP cards tend to be more available to buy, as
compared to high end PCI Express cards.

Some AGP cards (newegg approximated pricing):
ATI X800 Pro core=475MHz memory=900MHz ~$400
ATI X800 XT core=520MHz memory=1120MHz ~$500
Nvidia 6800 Ultra core=400Mhz memory=1100MHz ~$500

These will add a fair load to your power supply, so you may
need to upgrade that too.

In case you were thinking PCI Express has something to do
with increased performance, it doesn't. It just introduces
one more incompatible interface. The PCI Express standard
was created, to make hub interfaces for expansion cards
possible. The AGP slot didn't need this "improvement",
as AGP 3.0 is already a point-to-point parallel terminated
hardware interface, and changing it to PCI Express does
nothing for the end user. (And SLI is a crock... In that
it doesn't accelerate all game titles. A computer with
SLI dumps ~300W of heat into the room.)

Have fun,
Paul

With such a mobo, why would you want to go out and buy a new mobo, new
memory (possible requirement of new mobo), and new graphics card, when all
you really need to do is upgrade the graphics card. This board is one of
the more o/c friendly boards out there. The system you have should have no
probs with a gfx upgrade.
Silvertip
"Slow Lazy Dog" wrote in message
...

I have a P4C800-E Deluxe that's just about 4 or 5 months old. I built
a new sys with a P4 2.4ghz, 512MGB of PC3200 and twi SATA 120GB hdd's.

The only thing I didn't upgrade was my video card, an ATI 9000 Pro
128. After installing The Simpsons-Hit and Run. I found out my
vidcard isn't supported even with all the latest driver updates.
So... time to put the 9000 Pro on the shelf and move on. Which leads
me to PCI Express. This MB doesn't support it... does Asus make a MB
comparable to the P4C800-E Deluxe in terms of features with PCI
Express support? Any recommendations if they don't?

Thanks for any input.

SLD

Good info Paul. So PCI is a waste?
"Paul" wrote in message
...
In article , Slow Lazy Dog
wrote:

I have a P4C800-E Deluxe that's just about 4 or 5 months old. I built
a new sys with a P4 2.4ghz, 512MGB of PC3200 and twi SATA 120GB hdd's.

The only thing I didn't upgrade was my video card, an ATI 9000 Pro
128. After installing The Simpsons-Hit and Run. I found out my
vidcard isn't supported even with all the latest driver updates.
So... time to put the 9000 Pro on the shelf and move on. Which leads
me to PCI Express. This MB doesn't support it... does Asus make a MB
comparable to the P4C800-E Deluxe in terms of features with PCI
Express support? Any recommendations if they don't?

Thanks for any input.

SLD

DirectX 8.1 hardware support and T&L.
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon90...pro/index.html

http://www.vugames.com/product.do?gamePlatformId=424
System Requirements
Minimum Requirements:
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
PIII 700 MHZ or equivalent
192 MB of ram
4X speed CD or DVD drive
32 MB DirectX 8.1 hardware T&L video card (Geforce 2+)
1.2 GB HD space
DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
Keyboard and Mouse

That means it should work.

Did you install:

1) Chipset drivers ? Something like INFINST.exe or the like.
In Device Manager, (system section?) you'll see

Intel(R) 82875P Processor to AGP Controller - 2579

That means the chipset driver got installed for the AGP
interface.

2) Catalyst driver. Get the latest from ATI.
It consists of a video card driver, and a control panel.
If, in your Display control, you see a "SmartGART" tab,
that means both the driver and control panel component
installed OK.

3) Microsoft DirectX. It is hard to say what minimum version
the game you want to play requires. While Microsoft thinks
people should always upgrade, my experience is, older games
will malfunction on you, if you use more modern versions,
so which version you upgrade to, is a personal decision. I
would think 8.1, as listed in the above requirements, would
be the minimum to take advantage of all hardware features.
The Catalyst installer may have something to say about this
as well.

Now, once all this stuff is installed, get a copy of Powerstrip:
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

The options menu item, from the Powerstrip taskbar popup, shows
what options are enabled or disabled. And, that will help tell
you whether everything really is enabled on your combined
hardware and software.

In my case, I have a system disk that started as win98, upgraded
to win98se, upgraded to win2k, moved through three hardware
upgrades, and no matter how much installing and uninstalling I
did, I could not get the AGP texture transfer working on my
ATI 9800Pro. A clean install of the OS fixed everything up fine.

*******

Your plan to upgrade to PCI Express will not change the mundane
realities above. There will still be drivers to install, and
software to fight with.

The P4GD1 will be the least cost upgrade for you, as you
get to reuse most of your hardware. It doesn't seem to be
a North American product, and may appear in other markets.
There is little mention of it that I can find, in Google.

http://www.asus.com.tw/products/mb/s...1/overview.htm
http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock...1675_p4gd1.pdf

The P5AD2 family would be the most expensive way to go.
LGA775 processor socket (so your S478 processor won't fit).
DDR2 memory. See the top items on the list on this page:

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/mbindex.htm

Have a look through the other P5xxx products, and you may
find the right compromise set of technologies for your budget
and plans.

Stuffing a fat-ass AGP card in your current computer will
also fix this problem (i.e. the need to upgrade could be
satisfied quite well, using the P4C800-E, so at least for
the moment, you have quite a good base to build on. You
can stuff a 3.4GHz socket 478 Prescott processor in there
if you want.) There are AGP cards with very similar core
and memory clocks at the moment, to the PCI Express cards,
and the AGP cards tend to be more available to buy, as
compared to high end PCI Express cards.

Some AGP cards (newegg approximated pricing):
ATI X800 Pro core=475MHz memory=900MHz ~$400
ATI X800 XT core=520MHz memory=1120MHz ~$500
Nvidia 6800 Ultra core=400Mhz memory=1100MHz ~$500

These will add a fair load to your power supply, so you may
need to upgrade that too.

In case you were thinking PCI Express has something to do
with increased performance, it doesn't. It just introduces
one more incompatible interface. The PCI Express standard
was created, to make hub interfaces for expansion cards
possible. The AGP slot didn't need this "improvement",
as AGP 3.0 is already a point-to-point parallel terminated
hardware interface, and changing it to PCI Express does
nothing for the end user. (And SLI is a crock... In that
it doesn't accelerate all game titles. A computer with
SLI dumps ~300W of heat into the room.)

Have fun,
Paul

In article , "Jody
Sleath" wrote:

Good info Paul. So PCI is a waste?

PCI Express allows a point to point connection between
the chipset, and the PCI Express plugin card slots.
This gives an improvement in the electrical connection
between a plugin card and the rest of a computer. So,
the x1 PCI Express slots have some justification, from a
theoretical perspective. Now, the fact that most ordinary
PCI cards work without issue, is a testiment to the fact that
this improvement, to me at least, seems to be an unnecessary
optimization.

The additional bandwidth offered by PCI Express might be
the next argument someone would present. But the PCI
standard already has options for giving users more bandwidth,
(like 64bit/66MHz clock etc). And yet, it never seemed to
make sense, for anyone to offer those enhanced standards,
in the form of desktop chipsets. Server motherboards have
the slots, but not desktops.

The AGP slot is a point to point connection to begin
with. The Northbridge is on one end, and the AGP card
is on the other end. There is nothing to improve on there,
as far as the electrical connection.

The additional bandwidth of the PCI Express bus is a
waste, and if you check some of the review sites, they
demonstrate how much of the bandwidth is needed. For
the current generation of GPU (video card chips), PCI
Express isn't helping. And, as GPU chips are pretty
near the limits of their performance anyway, it remains
to be seen whether PCI Express bandwidth will ever be
saturated at the x16 level.

PCI Express means that a whole bunch of addin cards and
chips, will have to be redesigned. The cost of that
redesign will be passed on to the customers. So, don't
be surprised if a PCI Express LAN card or sound card
is a lot more expensive than the vanilla PCI one it
replaces. And the price of these cards will be higher
than it needs to be, even though the functionality of
the cards, to the end user, will be exactly the same
as the old PCI ones.

I am all for superior technology replacing inferior
technology. The problem in this case, is so many years
have passed, that the inferior technologies we have been
using, have been tweaked to perform without problems. For
example, smaller geometry CMOS circuitry has made it
possible for virtually all Northbridge chips, to have
AGP 8X slots that work without a problem, whereas a
few years ago, there was a huge pile of duff boards
with bad AGP. If this superior technology had been
introduced years ago, when AGP sucked, I could
understand the need for the introduction of PCI Express.
The introduction at this point in time is unnecessary,
and is only intended to separate customers from their
money.

They could easily have kept AGP and the current Northbridge
intact, and introduced PCI Express bridging in the
Southbridge. They could have offered a single x4 PCI Express
slot, for use with high bandwidth controller designs. That
would have caused virtually no additional cost to consumers,
and offered a slot with enhanced bandwidth, for use with SATA2
RAID or other exotic controllers. If the North-South bus
needed to be enhanced, to support such a change, the
change would be transparent to the end user.

A PCI Express serial interface runs at 2GHz. This is a
barrier to entry, for the "lesser" CMOS technologies. It
means the fab which is located 2 miles from me, cannot
make PCI Express parts. A lot more fabs could make
ordinary PCI chips, and as a result, this is why we can
find barrels of PCI Ethernet cards at the computer store
for $10 a piece.

Paul

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:54:23 -0500, (Paul) wrote:

In article , "Jody
Sleath" wrote:

Good info Paul. So PCI is a waste?

PCI Express allows a point to point connection between
the chipset, and the PCI Express plugin card slots.
This gives an improvement in the electrical connection
between a plugin card and the rest of a computer. So,
the x1 PCI Express slots have some justification, from a
theoretical perspective. Now, the fact that most ordinary
PCI cards work without issue, is a testiment to the fact that
this improvement, to me at least, seems to be an unnecessary
optimization.

The additional bandwidth offered by PCI Express might be
the next argument someone would present. But the PCI
standard already has options for giving users more bandwidth,
(like 64bit/66MHz clock etc). And yet, it never seemed to
make sense, for anyone to offer those enhanced standards,
in the form of desktop chipsets. Server motherboards have
the slots, but not desktops.

The AGP slot is a point to point connection to begin
with. The Northbridge is on one end, and the AGP card
is on the other end. There is nothing to improve on there,
as far as the electrical connection.

The additional bandwidth of the PCI Express bus is a
waste, and if you check some of the review sites, they
demonstrate how much of the bandwidth is needed. For
the current generation of GPU (video card chips), PCI
Express isn't helping. And, as GPU chips are pretty
near the limits of their performance anyway, it remains
to be seen whether PCI Express bandwidth will ever be
saturated at the x16 level.

PCI Express means that a whole bunch of addin cards and
chips, will have to be redesigned. The cost of that
redesign will be passed on to the customers. So, don't
be surprised if a PCI Express LAN card or sound card
is a lot more expensive than the vanilla PCI one it
replaces. And the price of these cards will be higher
than it needs to be, even though the functionality of
the cards, to the end user, will be exactly the same
as the old PCI ones.

I am all for superior technology replacing inferior
technology. The problem in this case, is so many years
have passed, that the inferior technologies we have been
using, have been tweaked to perform without problems. For
example, smaller geometry CMOS circuitry has made it
possible for virtually all Northbridge chips, to have
AGP 8X slots that work without a problem, whereas a
few years ago, there was a huge pile of duff boards
with bad AGP. If this superior technology had been
introduced years ago, when AGP sucked, I could
understand the need for the introduction of PCI Express.
The introduction at this point in time is unnecessary,
and is only intended to separate customers from their
money.

They could easily have kept AGP and the current Northbridge
intact, and introduced PCI Express bridging in the
Southbridge. They could have offered a single x4 PCI Express
slot, for use with high bandwidth controller designs. That
would have caused virtually no additional cost to consumers,
and offered a slot with enhanced bandwidth, for use with SATA2
RAID or other exotic controllers. If the North-South bus
needed to be enhanced, to support such a change, the
change would be transparent to the end user.

A PCI Express serial interface runs at 2GHz. This is a
barrier to entry, for the "lesser" CMOS technologies. It
means the fab which is located 2 miles from me, cannot
make PCI Express parts. A lot more fabs could make
ordinary PCI chips, and as a result, this is why we can
find barrels of PCI Ethernet cards at the computer store
for $10 a piece.

Paul

No offense, you likely meant well somehow, but the above myopic diatribe has
so many technical half-truths, "couldda beens", "shouldda beens", and errors
of omission as to render it a mere senseless slaughter of bytes.

The future is here, now...

/daytripper (one PCI Express platform design engineer who is grateful to see
Parallel PCI and AGP go the way of ISA and VLB...)

In article ,
wrote:

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:54:23 -0500, (Paul) wrote:

In article , "Jody
Sleath" wrote:

Good info Paul. So PCI is a waste?

PCI Express allows a point to point connection between
the chipset, and the PCI Express plugin card slots.
This gives an improvement in the electrical connection
between a plugin card and the rest of a computer. So,
the x1 PCI Express slots have some justification, from a
theoretical perspective. Now, the fact that most ordinary
PCI cards work without issue, is a testiment to the fact that
this improvement, to me at least, seems to be an unnecessary
optimization.

The additional bandwidth offered by PCI Express might be
the next argument someone would present. But the PCI
standard already has options for giving users more bandwidth,
(like 64bit/66MHz clock etc). And yet, it never seemed to
make sense, for anyone to offer those enhanced standards,
in the form of desktop chipsets. Server motherboards have
the slots, but not desktops.

The AGP slot is a point to point connection to begin
with. The Northbridge is on one end, and the AGP card
is on the other end. There is nothing to improve on there,
as far as the electrical connection.

The additional bandwidth of the PCI Express bus is a
waste, and if you check some of the review sites, they
demonstrate how much of the bandwidth is needed. For
the current generation of GPU (video card chips), PCI
Express isn't helping. And, as GPU chips are pretty
near the limits of their performance anyway, it remains
to be seen whether PCI Express bandwidth will ever be
saturated at the x16 level.

PCI Express means that a whole bunch of addin cards and
chips, will have to be redesigned. The cost of that
redesign will be passed on to the customers. So, don't
be surprised if a PCI Express LAN card or sound card
is a lot more expensive than the vanilla PCI one it
replaces. And the price of these cards will be higher
than it needs to be, even though the functionality of
the cards, to the end user, will be exactly the same
as the old PCI ones.

I am all for superior technology replacing inferior
technology. The problem in this case, is so many years
have passed, that the inferior technologies we have been
using, have been tweaked to perform without problems. For
example, smaller geometry CMOS circuitry has made it
possible for virtually all Northbridge chips, to have
AGP 8X slots that work without a problem, whereas a
few years ago, there was a huge pile of duff boards
with bad AGP. If this superior technology had been
introduced years ago, when AGP sucked, I could
understand the need for the introduction of PCI Express.
The introduction at this point in time is unnecessary,
and is only intended to separate customers from their
money.

They could easily have kept AGP and the current Northbridge
intact, and introduced PCI Express bridging in the
Southbridge. They could have offered a single x4 PCI Express
slot, for use with high bandwidth controller designs. That
would have caused virtually no additional cost to consumers,
and offered a slot with enhanced bandwidth, for use with SATA2
RAID or other exotic controllers. If the North-South bus
needed to be enhanced, to support such a change, the
change would be transparent to the end user.

A PCI Express serial interface runs at 2GHz. This is a
barrier to entry, for the "lesser" CMOS technologies. It
means the fab which is located 2 miles from me, cannot
make PCI Express parts. A lot more fabs could make
ordinary PCI chips, and as a result, this is why we can
find barrels of PCI Ethernet cards at the computer store
for $10 a piece.

Paul

No offense, you likely meant well somehow, but the above myopic diatribe has
so many technical half-truths, "couldda beens", "shouldda beens", and errors
of omission as to render it a mere senseless slaughter of bytes.

The future is here, now...

/daytripper (one PCI Express platform design engineer who is grateful to see
Parallel PCI and AGP go the way of ISA and VLB...)

Well, at least you aren't a PCI Express evangalist :-)
I'll go away now, and wallow in my ignorance.

Have fun,
Paul

In article ,
(Paul) wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:54:23 -0500, (Paul) wrote:

In article , "Jody
Sleath" wrote:

Good info Paul. So PCI is a waste?

PCI Express allows a point to point connection between
the chipset, and the PCI Express plugin card slots.
This gives an improvement in the electrical connection
between a plugin card and the rest of a computer. So,
the x1 PCI Express slots have some justification, from a
theoretical perspective. Now, the fact that most ordinary
PCI cards work without issue, is a testiment to the fact that
this improvement, to me at least, seems to be an unnecessary
optimization.

The additional bandwidth offered by PCI Express might be
the next argument someone would present. But the PCI
standard already has options for giving users more bandwidth,
(like 64bit/66MHz clock etc). And yet, it never seemed to
make sense, for anyone to offer those enhanced standards,
in the form of desktop chipsets. Server motherboards have
the slots, but not desktops.

The AGP slot is a point to point connection to begin
with. The Northbridge is on one end, and the AGP card
is on the other end. There is nothing to improve on there,
as far as the electrical connection.

The additional bandwidth of the PCI Express bus is a
waste, and if you check some of the review sites, they
demonstrate how much of the bandwidth is needed. For
the current generation of GPU (video card chips), PCI
Express isn't helping. And, as GPU chips are pretty
near the limits of their performance anyway, it remains
to be seen whether PCI Express bandwidth will ever be
saturated at the x16 level.

PCI Express means that a whole bunch of addin cards and
chips, will have to be redesigned. The cost of that
redesign will be passed on to the customers. So, don't
be surprised if a PCI Express LAN card or sound card
is a lot more expensive than the vanilla PCI one it
replaces. And the price of these cards will be higher
than it needs to be, even though the functionality of
the cards, to the end user, will be exactly the same
as the old PCI ones.

I am all for superior technology replacing inferior
technology. The problem in this case, is so many years
have passed, that the inferior technologies we have been
using, have been tweaked to perform without problems. For
example, smaller geometry CMOS circuitry has made it
possible for virtually all Northbridge chips, to have
AGP 8X slots that work without a problem, whereas a
few years ago, there was a huge pile of duff boards
with bad AGP. If this superior technology had been
introduced years ago, when AGP sucked, I could
understand the need for the introduction of PCI Express.
The introduction at this point in time is unnecessary,
and is only intended to separate customers from their
money.

They could easily have kept AGP and the current Northbridge
intact, and introduced PCI Express bridging in the
Southbridge. They could have offered a single x4 PCI Express
slot, for use with high bandwidth controller designs. That
would have caused virtually no additional cost to consumers,
and offered a slot with enhanced bandwidth, for use with SATA2
RAID or other exotic controllers. If the North-South bus
needed to be enhanced, to support such a change, the
change would be transparent to the end user.

A PCI Express serial interface runs at 2GHz. This is a
barrier to entry, for the "lesser" CMOS technologies. It
means the fab which is located 2 miles from me, cannot
make PCI Express parts. A lot more fabs could make
ordinary PCI chips, and as a result, this is why we can
find barrels of PCI Ethernet cards at the computer store
for $10 a piece.

Paul

No offense, you likely meant well somehow, but the above myopic diatribe has
so many technical half-truths, "couldda beens", "shouldda beens", and errors
of omission as to render it a mere senseless slaughter of bytes.

The future is here, now...

/daytripper (one PCI Express platform design engineer who is grateful to see
Parallel PCI and AGP go the way of ISA and VLB...)

Well, at least you aren't a PCI Express evangalist :-)
I'll go away now, and wallow in my ignorance.

Have fun,
Paul

FYI:

Oh my... Shocked I am. I guess it really is hard
to make those suckers.

http://theinquirer.net/?article=18758

Paul

daytripper wrote:

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:54:23 -0500, (Paul) wrote:


In article , "Jody
Sleath" wrote:


Good info Paul. So PCI is a waste?

PCI Express allows a point to point connection between
the chipset, and the PCI Express plugin card slots.
This gives an improvement in the electrical connection
between a plugin card and the rest of a computer. So,
the x1 PCI Express slots have some justification, from a
theoretical perspective. Now, the fact that most ordinary
PCI cards work without issue, is a testiment to the fact that
this improvement, to me at least, seems to be an unnecessary
optimization.

The additional bandwidth offered by PCI Express might be
the next argument someone would present. But the PCI
standard already has options for giving users more bandwidth,
(like 64bit/66MHz clock etc). And yet, it never seemed to
make sense, for anyone to offer those enhanced standards,
in the form of desktop chipsets. Server motherboards have
the slots, but not desktops.

The AGP slot is a point to point connection to begin
with. The Northbridge is on one end, and the AGP card
is on the other end. There is nothing to improve on there,
as far as the electrical connection.

The additional bandwidth of the PCI Express bus is a
waste, and if you check some of the review sites, they
demonstrate how much of the bandwidth is needed. For
the current generation of GPU (video card chips), PCI
Express isn't helping. And, as GPU chips are pretty
near the limits of their performance anyway, it remains
to be seen whether PCI Express bandwidth will ever be
saturated at the x16 level.

PCI Express means that a whole bunch of addin cards and
chips, will have to be redesigned. The cost of that
redesign will be passed on to the customers. So, don't
be surprised if a PCI Express LAN card or sound card
is a lot more expensive than the vanilla PCI one it
replaces. And the price of these cards will be higher
than it needs to be, even though the functionality of
the cards, to the end user, will be exactly the same
as the old PCI ones.

I am all for superior technology replacing inferior
technology. The problem in this case, is so many years
have passed, that the inferior technologies we have been
using, have been tweaked to perform without problems. For
example, smaller geometry CMOS circuitry has made it
possible for virtually all Northbridge chips, to have
AGP 8X slots that work without a problem, whereas a
few years ago, there was a huge pile of duff boards
with bad AGP. If this superior technology had been
introduced years ago, when AGP sucked, I could
understand the need for the introduction of PCI Express.
The introduction at this point in time is unnecessary,
and is only intended to separate customers from their
money.

They could easily have kept AGP and the current Northbridge
intact, and introduced PCI Express bridging in the
Southbridge. They could have offered a single x4 PCI Express
slot, for use with high bandwidth controller designs. That
would have caused virtually no additional cost to consumers,
and offered a slot with enhanced bandwidth, for use with SATA2
RAID or other exotic controllers. If the North-South bus
needed to be enhanced, to support such a change, the
change would be transparent to the end user.

A PCI Express serial interface runs at 2GHz. This is a
barrier to entry, for the "lesser" CMOS technologies. It
means the fab which is located 2 miles from me, cannot
make PCI Express parts. A lot more fabs could make
ordinary PCI chips, and as a result, this is why we can
find barrels of PCI Ethernet cards at the computer store
for $10 a piece.

Paul


No offense, you likely meant well somehow, but the above myopic diatribe has
so many technical half-truths, "couldda beens", "shouldda beens", and errors
of omission as to render it a mere senseless slaughter of bytes.

The future is here, now...

/daytripper (one PCI Express platform design engineer who is grateful to see
Parallel PCI and AGP go the way of ISA and VLB...)


I seem to recall IBM saying that MicroChannel Architecture was the best
thing to ever happen to PCs. Where is it now? Just because something
is "better" does not mean that the general public will accept it. Look
at Betamax vs VHS. Betamax was supposedly the better product but the
people bought the VHS standard and Betamax died.

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 06:48:57 GMT, "Michael W. Ryder"
wrote:

I seem to recall IBM saying that MicroChannel Architecture was the best
thing to ever happen to PCs. Where is it now? Just because something
is "better" does not mean that the general public will accept it. Look
at Betamax vs VHS. Betamax was supposedly the better product but the
people bought the VHS standard and Betamax died.

A classic example of mis-applied logic. Nice work.

Since you went and waded in above your head, here's the clue you lack:

- MCA was a PROPRIETARY interconnect architecture.
- BetaMax was a PROPRIETARY technology package.
- PCI Express is NOT PROPRIETARY, it's an OPEN STANDARD.

hth ;-)

/daytripper

Paul wrote:
The additional bandwidth offered by PCI Express might be
the next argument someone would present. But the PCI
standard already has options for giving users more bandwidth,
(like 64bit/66MHz clock etc). And yet, it never seemed to
make sense, for anyone to offer those enhanced standards,
in the form of desktop chipsets. Server motherboards have
the slots, but not desktops.

The reason being it is too expensive. Increasing the clock rate or
adding more wires onto the bus makes the board design more difficult,
which makes it more expensive to design, plus making it more likely that
more layers will be needed in the PCB, etc.

The AGP slot is a point to point connection to begin
with. The Northbridge is on one end, and the AGP card
is on the other end. There is nothing to improve on there,
as far as the electrical connection.

One problem being, AGP has no provisions for more than one slot, making
such applications as SLI impossible or impractical.

The additional bandwidth of the PCI Express bus is a
waste, and if you check some of the review sites, they
demonstrate how much of the bandwidth is needed. For
the current generation of GPU (video card chips), PCI
Express isn't helping. And, as GPU chips are pretty
near the limits of their performance anyway, it remains
to be seen whether PCI Express bandwidth will ever be
saturated at the x16 level.

Bandwidth saturation isn't the only issue, there are other things such
as latency and guaranteed bandwidth allocation that PCI Express also
addresses.

PCI Express means that a whole bunch of addin cards and
chips, will have to be redesigned. The cost of that
redesign will be passed on to the customers. So, don't
be surprised if a PCI Express LAN card or sound card
is a lot more expensive than the vanilla PCI one it
replaces. And the price of these cards will be higher
than it needs to be, even though the functionality of
the cards, to the end user, will be exactly the same
as the old PCI ones.

Sound cards aren't going to be a prime market for PCI Express cards for
a while, since they don't need the bandwidth. LAN cards likely will be,
since it's not possible to get full performance on a Gigabit Ethernet
card on a 32-bit PCI card, as well as SCSI and RAID cards.


I am all for superior technology replacing inferior
technology. The problem in this case, is so many years
have passed, that the inferior technologies we have been
using, have been tweaked to perform without problems. For
example, smaller geometry CMOS circuitry has made it
possible for virtually all Northbridge chips, to have
AGP 8X slots that work without a problem, whereas a
few years ago, there was a huge pile of duff boards
with bad AGP. If this superior technology had been
introduced years ago, when AGP sucked, I could
understand the need for the introduction of PCI Express.
The introduction at this point in time is unnecessary,
and is only intended to separate customers from their
money.

The problems with some motherboards and AGP weren't due to lack of
technology, they were due to shoddy design (VIA being a big offender).
Intel's chipsets generally had no problems with any version of AGP.

They could easily have kept AGP and the current Northbridge
intact, and introduced PCI Express bridging in the
Southbridge. They could have offered a single x4 PCI Express
slot, for use with high bandwidth controller designs. That
would have caused virtually no additional cost to consumers,
and offered a slot with enhanced bandwidth, for use with SATA2
RAID or other exotic controllers. If the North-South bus
needed to be enhanced, to support such a change, the
change would be transparent to the end user.

What would have been the point of this? If you're not going to use the
faster bus for the most performance-demanding component - the video card
- what is the use?

A PCI Express serial interface runs at 2GHz. This is a
barrier to entry, for the "lesser" CMOS technologies. It
means the fab which is located 2 miles from me, cannot
make PCI Express parts. A lot more fabs could make
ordinary PCI chips, and as a result, this is why we can
find barrels of PCI Ethernet cards at the computer store
for $10 a piece.

Of course some manufacturers will have to retool, the same would have
been true when moving from ISA to PCI but few would say that wasn't
worthwhile..

--
Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/