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question about PCI slots (HP xw8400)
Hi.
Simple question for hardware guru, but I have to make sure is exactly what we need. There is workstation HP xw8400, and we basically need 5 PCI slots 4 of them will be fill by normal PCI cards and one will fill by half length PCI card. So basic question is: is it possible with that computer? (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscmi...008_hi-res.pdf) In spec i have 3 normal PCI and 3 PCI-X, so should be ok, but I want to make sure before ordering. Thanks in advance. -- Adam |
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question about PCI slots (HP xw8400)
whitey wrote:
Hi. Simple question for hardware guru, but I have to make sure is exactly what we need. There is workstation HP xw8400, and we basically need 5 PCI slots 4 of them will be fill by normal PCI cards and one will fill by half length PCI card. So basic question is: is it possible with that computer? (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscmi...008_hi-res.pdf) In spec i have 3 normal PCI and 3 PCI-X, so should be ok, but I want to make sure before ordering. Thanks in advance. NO! That machine has only 1 PCI slot and 3 PCI-X. The others are 3 PCIe and are not compatible, so your one short. |
#3
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question about PCI slots (HP xw8400)
whitey wrote:
Hi. Simple question for hardware guru, but I have to make sure is exactly what we need. There is workstation HP xw8400, and we basically need 5 PCI slots 4 of them will be fill by normal PCI cards and one will fill by half length PCI card. So basic question is: is it possible with that computer? (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscmi...008_hi-res.pdf) In spec i have 3 normal PCI and 3 PCI-X, so should be ok, but I want to make sure before ordering. Thanks in advance. There aren't a lot of motherboards with five PCI slots any more. The boards have more PCI Express slots, which are not compatible. This is an example of one that still has five PCI slots. GIGABYTE GA-P35-S3G. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128084 http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggIma...128-084-05.jpg PCI-X and PCI at least, share the same bus structure. But PCI-X slots run at higher clock speeds, and have 3.3V for the bus voltage. The regular PCI slot may use 3.3V or 5V for I/O, at the motherboard designer's discretion. Ideally, your PCI cards may be universal keyed (work with 5V or 3.3V), or be 5V powered (in which case they'll work with a lot of older motherboards). The slots or keyways in the edge connector, determine whether the card will fit into the slot, when you try to fit it. So in fact, you have a lot of questions to ask. You should examine the PCI cards more carefully, to decide whether they are PCI-X type or PCI type. Expensive RAID cards, for example, might be PCI-X, due to their bandwidth requirements for storage devices. PCI and PCI-X are examples of parallel busses. The bus is shared and connected to all the slots on the same bus segment. The bandwidth is shared as well. So if you had five 32 bit PCI slots, there is a maximum of 133MB/sec available at any one time, shared by the slots. (Assuming the normal 33MHz desktop motherboard clocking scheme - and the parallel bus is 32 bits wide.) PCI Express is a newer design, where the connection between the motherboard chips and each slot is point to point (not shared). Interconnect is high speed serial. Each serial link is called a "lane" and offers 250MB/sec bandwidth. Thus, even the PCI Express x1 slot, having only one lane, gives a private connection to the chipset (not shared by other slots), and has double the bandwidth of the (shared) basic PCI slot. Graphics cards now use a PCI Express x16 sized slot. The slot has so many pins, because there are 16 differential TX and 16 differential RX pins, to carry the 16 lanes of bus interconnect. That is a total of 64 pins, which is why the slot is longer, and the slot size is comparable to older technologies. But with 16 lanes, the bandwidth available is 4GB/sec. Wikipedia has a couple articles, but they didn't answer all my questions. (PCI-X 66MHz, 100MHz, 133MHz, 64 bit wide parallel bus, shared, small number of slots per bus segment, due to speeds involved. 3.3V I/O. While there is a revision 2 for PCI-X, I don't know how widespread it has become.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci-x (PCI cards. 33 or 66MHz. 32 or 64 bit busses. 3.3V or 5V slots) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periphe...t_Interconnect In the newer PCI Express slot types, the physical connectors are different sizes, depending on the number of lanes they want to support for that slot. For example, in the following picture, from top to bottom, are x4, x16, x1, x16 PCI Express, with the bottom one being the older PCI 32 bit slot (5V keyed). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PCIExpress.jpg If you have a bunch of PCI cards that must go into a new computer, and the new computer has a bunch of "useless" slots in it, there is an alternative. This product comes with an option for a PCI Express x1 card, that plugs into the new computer, and runs an "extension cord" to an expansion chassis. The expansion chassis is used to hold your PCI cards. http://www.magma.com/products/pci/7P...oductBrief.pdf In bullet point 6 in that document, you can see they have host bus adapter cards for a variety of computer slot types. That expansion chassis can even be connected to a laptop with ExpressCard slot. Note that they have more than one expansion chassis type, and you can get a PCI chassis or a PCI-X chassis etc. While those expansion products are expensive, they can solve the problem. If the expansion chassis costs more than $1000, then in some cases, it may be cheaper to buy new cards instead. Since some people need legacy support, which is not provided by new cards, then that is when the $1000+ is well spent. Paul |
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question about PCI slots (HP xw8400)
Your question is not very clear. But you need to know that:
PCI PCI-E PCI-X are three different non-compatible architectures. Going back to your question, it would appear that that computer will NOT be suitable for your puposes. -- --DaveW "whitey" wrote in message ... Hi. Simple question for hardware guru, but I have to make sure is exactly what we need. There is workstation HP xw8400, and we basically need 5 PCI slots 4 of them will be fill by normal PCI cards and one will fill by half length PCI card. So basic question is: is it possible with that computer? (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscmi...008_hi-res.pdf) In spec i have 3 normal PCI and 3 PCI-X, so should be ok, but I want to make sure before ordering. Thanks in advance. -- Adam |
#5
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question about PCI slots (HP xw8400)
"DaveW" wrote in message . .. Your question is not very clear. But you need to know that: PCI PCI-E PCI-X are three different non-compatible architectures. Going back to your question, it would appear that that computer will NOT be suitable for your puposes. Actually, many PCI cards can be used in a PCI-X slot. Several PCI-X cards can also be used in PCI slots as well. |
#6
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question about PCI slots (HP xw8400)
Calab wrote:
"DaveW" wrote in message . .. Your question is not very clear. But you need to know that: PCI PCI-E PCI-X are three different non-compatible architectures. Going back to your question, it would appear that that computer will NOT be suitable for your puposes. Actually, many PCI cards can be used in a PCI-X slot. Several PCI-X cards can also be used in PCI slots as well. And you can have a devil of a time getting that info for some cards. For example, some Adaptec controllers can be plugged into an ordinary PCI slot, and work. But to do that, it helps to find the relevant page on the Adaptec site, and "get it in writing". I wish sites like pcisig.org would do their jobs, and write decent primers on PCI/PCI-X etc., so other people don't have to explain this stuff. Any time that copies of standards are only available at a price, it means consumers are limited as to where they can get the necessary information. Paul |
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