What is PCI Express?

[Exmun]

I'm planing on building a new computer soon. I was looking at some companies that sell computers. I'm looking at an Athlon 64 Socket 939. At one place that I'm looking to custom build a system ( www.endpcnoise.com ) the stock motherboard is an Asus A8V-E SE for the 939 systems. It says that the motherboard has PCI Express.

What is PCI Express? Is it something related to the video card or is it a new type of PCI bus/design? I don't want a computer that will make my current PCI soundcard (lynx II) obscelete. I've googled it, but I'm getting different and conflicting definitions.

[elder rookie]

pci express is both. it's a new type of pci bus and it can be used pretty much for anything reallly. right now it's primarily used for video but in reality it can be used for anything. anyway i have a similar board (mine is the A8V-E deluxe) and my board has both pci and pci express so i assume your board would also (check the specs just to make sure) unless you find any info saying that there is no regular pci on your board (which i doubt). you should be able to use you lynx II.

[Exmun]

Thanks elder rookie. That was helpful. I am also considering a socket 754 Athlon system. Honestly with all of the different Athlon 64 types of sockets, I'm not sure what is what. I don't want bleeding edge technology price, but with three types of Athlon 64s, it's a bit daunting to understand if the cpu speeds directly translate to performance. Thanks for the explanation.

[elder rookie]

i assume since yr looking at a 64bit chip yr thinking of running a 64bit OS. you might wanna read this article http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050823/index.html and make sure that yr lynx II card has 64 bit drivers.

[I Lurk]

Carefull with this board and Athlon X2. It is Nforce4 chipset. Nforce4 seems to be problematic with audio apps and interfaces. Better use an A8V deluxe. Instead of a PCIe X16 for video, you will have to use the AGP (you might have an AGP video card already).
You will get 5 regular PCI slots for your Lynx and any other upgrade you would need to make (another Lynx, UAD-1 cards etc ...)

[elder rookie]

Originally Posted by I Lurk

Carefull with this board and Athlon X2. It is Nforce4 chipset. Nforce4 seems to be problematic with audio apps and interfaces. Better use an A8V deluxe. Instead of a PCIe X16 for video, you will have to use the AGP (you might have an AGP video card already).
You will get 5 regular PCI slots for your Lynx and any other upgrade you would need to make (another Lynx, UAD-1 cards etc ...)

i have the A8V-E deluxe. it has no AGP slot.

[I Lurk]

Originally Posted by elder rookie

i have the A8V-E deluxe. it has no AGP slot.

A8V deluxe, not A8VE

http://usa.asus.com/products3.aspx?l...IA%20K8T800Pro

[George Necola]

for these general informations about.. what is pci express, please perfom a search in your favourite searchtool and insert wikipedia in front of your search tasks..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express

it-s in principal a diffrent approach in filetransfer through the pci/pool.. now the distribution is kind of independent on every pcislot.. if one slot hangs up *because of driverproblems and blah*the other should work fine.. this is just for theorie.. you can also transfer more data through the bus..

wikipedia pci express in google..

socket 754 is no more development.. 939 is the way to go.. I use a AMD 3.5 gigaherz 64bit system on asus k8v/deluxe...

your eyes should be focused on quality ram... use prediction from the motherboard/manual..

[thenoodle]

There's pci and pci-e (pci express). Which work interchangeably.

But there's also the incoming pci-x...which as I understand, no regular pci hardware will work with.

And as I understand it, pci-x is a whole new standard that is being brought in by the whole industry ...and will pretty much make pci obsolete ....just like pci did to 16 bit isa.

In fact, I think there are pci-x slots appearing now on a lot of mobos..although I haven't really heard of any cards for those slots yet. I kinda remember that being the case when pci slots first came in.

[bernieL0max]

Originally Posted by thenoodle

There's pci and pci-e (pci express). Which work interchangeably.

But there's also the incoming pci-x...which as I understand, no regular pci hardware will work with.

And as I understand it, pci-x is a whole new standard that is being brought in by the whole industry ...and will pretty much make pci obsolete ....just like pci did to 16 bit isa.

In fact, I think there are pci-x slots appearing now on a lot of mobos..although I haven't really heard of any cards for those slots yet. I kinda remember that being the case when pci slots first came in.

Seems you're a little confused there...

PCI is a standard which has been around for many years, it's a 32-bit slot, operating at either 33MHz or 66MHz. Data it transferred in parallel.

PXI-X has been around for a few years now, and is primarily used in servers, it is basically a 64-bit version of the existing PCI Standard; capable of running at 66MHz, 100MHz or 133MHz, it also has a much longer slot. I'm not sure if you would find anything apart from SCSI/RAID cards that use a PCI-X slot. Data it also transferred in parallel. from memory the larger slot is still backwards compatible, when you put in a 32-bit PCI card it simply does not fill the slot completely.


PCIe or PCI Express is the relatively new standard. Data is now transferred in series, making the ports MUCH smaller on the board, and making board designs easier and smaller. There are not many PCIe cards at all on the market, with the exception of 16x PCIe video cards (a different slot which groups several PCIe ports together to increase bandwidth). From everything which I have read it will be a LONG time (if ever), that we start seeing Pro Audio cards on the PCIe bus.


There is quite a lot of information out there that suggests that PCIe based board are not ideal for DAWs, regardless of them still having some legacy PCI slots for your existing hardware. This could simply be resistance to change, who knows?

[thenoodle]

....PXI-X has been around for a few years now, and is primarily used in servers...


and from everything I've been reading in the past few months, pci-x is being readied for the major desktop oriented mobos to coincide with the release of Vista...and on those mobos (so far), the layout is multiple pci-x slots and only ONE pci/pci-e (like in the old waning days of isa when multiple pci slots appeared and only one isa)....which means my pci stuff's days are really numbered now because I believe Vista gets here in about a year and a half.

[genericperson]

the typical place to place the video card for many, many years has been the agp slot. the agp slot is slowly being retired in favor of the pci express. just like computer manufacturers are migrating from ata drives to sata drives.

[bernieL0max]

Originally Posted by thenoodle

....PXI-X has been around for a few years now, and is primarily used in servers...


and from everything I've been reading in the past few months, pci-x is being readied for the major desktop oriented mobos to coincide with the release of Vista...and on those mobos (so far), the layout is multiple pci-x slots and only ONE pci/pci-e (like in the old waning days of isa when multiple pci slots appeared and only one isa)....which means my pci stuff's days are really numbered now because I believe Vista gets here in about a year and a half.

TheNoodle...

You keep getting everything back-to-front and are no doubt confusing readers.

PCI-X is NOT an acronym for PCI Express...

'PCIe' IS the acronym for PCI Express.. the new serial standard which is now populating motherboards;

PCIe's release has little or nothing to do with the release of Windows Vista. One is a natural progression in hardware, the move to serial busses has a LOT to do with making systems smaller; same as the move from ATA to SATA. One is a progression in software... apart from the fact that they happened in the same approximate timeframe (well, the same 5 years give or take), the two really are not related.


Anyway; to hopefully save any more confusion;


This picture;

Shows a PCIe x16 Slot (video), 2 PCIe slots, and 2 PCI slots (L to R).


This picture;

Shows a board with 4 PCI slots, 2 PCI-X slots, and a single AGP-Pro slot (L to R)


This picture;

Shows what a 'typical' modern motherbaord is going to look like; a limit number of legacy PCI slots, several PCIe (PCI Express) slots, and a PCIe x16 Slot for a video card. (L to R)

[thenoodle]

......."Shows what a 'typical' modern motherbaord is going to look like; a limit number of legacy PCI slots, several PCIe (PCI Express) slots, and a PCIe x16 Slot for a video card. (L to R)...."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes...there was pci..then there was pci-e..and now there is the animal coming around the bend that I'm talking about....64 bit pci-x. That will kill pci forever just like pci killed isa. Within 18 months by my guess.

Your illustrations don't look like what I'm talking about. You have one picture with a 64 bit pci-x slot residing next to pci slots. The upcoming mobos I'm seeing over and over have three to four 64 bit pci-x slots and only ONE pci or pci-e slot. And are mobos slated to release with Vista systems.

I think you're illustrating mobos from 8 months in the future...not the ones 18 months out that I'm reading about.

I don't mind being corrected again if there's info I'm not getting here...but I don't think I'm mixed up.

What I am reading and saying....is that within 2 years..24 months..about the time Vista is coming out..the mobo manufacturers are planning to NOT include more than one pci slot...or ONE pci-e slot. Ever again. Like what happened with isa at the end. Those pictures you illustrate would seem to be mobos that we'll see coming in during the next year, gradually moving pci-x onto the mobos just like sata started appearing quite a while before any drives were available for the connectors.


My point in mentioning any of this is that I am running two and three pci oriented sound cards (echo) in my current, 32 bit, "soon to be ancient" pci slots....and if I intend ...in about 18 months...to buy a new dual-core (or maybe quad by then) p4...with 64 bit vista...built around a desktop running my new 64 bit Nuendo...on a pc loaded with 3 pci-x slots and only one "old" 32 bit pci or pci-e slot (from way back there in 2005)...well then I better kiss all my Echo Laylas goodbye because I sure won't be able to plug three of the Layla pci cards into a pc that only has....ONE pci slot. Which is where this is going. As I read it.

I didn't bring this up to confuse the question as to "what is pci-e". I brought it up to illustrate that pci-e...as a thing...is gonna have a relatively short life. And pci will be history on the mobos shortly thereafter.

Because Pci-x is just around the corner.

[bernieL0max]

PCI-X is not new. It has been around for years; 6 year yesterday to be precise!; the specification was release on 27th September, 1999, the press release and can be read here;
link...

PCI-X is a 64-bit version of the PCI bus, it has been used primarily for SCSI, FibreChannel, RAID and LAN cards in servers and workstations for many years. PCI-X cards are backwards compatible and can be plugged into a PCI slot - however they will operate at greatly reduced performance. The text I have read are unclear if this works the other way around - ie a PCI device can be plugged into a PCI-X slot? although it would appear not; given the layout of the 'keys' in the slot.

The PCI-X 2.0 specification was released on the 24th July, 2002... the same day the specification for PCI Express was released (by the same company)... feel free to read a short editorial here; (I highly recomend you read that editorial before replying.)
link...


At this point in time when manufacturers are trying to make PCs smaller and smaller, it would make no sense whatsoever to switch to a bus which has a connector bigger than anything we've seen before! and a 64-bit parallel data bus to route around the board.

As far as the bit-depth of the bus... being serial the PCIe bus can probably vary it's word length? I've just spent 5 minutes googling, and found same basic stuff but would need to read the PCIe specifcation to comment properly - and I dont really have that much spare time :)


Matt

[respirator]

This is funny.

To answer the original question:

First go with the 939-socket. Supports dual core processors etc.

Secondly. Forget about PCI Express. The pro and semi-pro audio products all uses regurlar PCI. So go for a motherboard with as many PCI slots as you are likely to need in the next couple of years (sound card(s), UAD, Powercore etc.) and AGP for graphics.

If a new standard is emerging in a couple of years - and there allways is - you can use that when you're going to upgrade the next time around (or more likely next time again). Then there maybe, possibly exists audio products for this new standard.

Thomas

[Exmun]

Thanks Thomas. Your answer was short, simple and directly answered the question. To bernieL0max, your pictures helped me see and understand which was which. At least I can now tell a PCI-e from an AGP from a regular PCI from a PCI-X from a PCIe x16..... I think.

My bottom line is that all of the motherboards that I have been considering have at least three (regular) PCI slots on them. For now this will run my LynxII and UAD-1. The advice I took away is to make sure that there are enough (regular) PCI slots for current and future uses regardless of whether there are additional PCI-Express or PCI-X slots. For this I thank you guys for answering. Please keep the advice coming if you see any need to clear up anything.

Es.