Re: Recommendations for 939 motherboard

Andrew Schulman wrote:

But actually one feature of that board that was very important for me, and
which just about all of the reviews and hype seem to ignore or think is
terribly passe, is that it has 4 PCI (not PCI-X) slots. For those of us
with add in sound, SCSI, TV tuner, and modem cards, it's getting mighty hard
to find a mobo that will take them all. Most new board have only 3 or even
just 2 PCI slots. AFAICT there are basically no add-in cards available yet
for PCI-X, except for video controllers. Not to mention that I already have
all of the PCI cards that I want... So to me, a board with 3 PCI slots and
3 PCI-X slots (often including 2 PCI-X slots for SLI, for which I have no
use) is just a lot of wasted space.

You seem to be confusing PCI-X with PCI Express. They're not the same
thing!

PCI-X is very similar to traditional PCI but 64-bits wide and clocked at speeds up to 133 MHz. PCI Express (sometimes referred to as PCI-e or PCI-Ex) is what you're now finding for new graphics cards and dual PCI Express slots will get you SLI.

PCI-X was only ever common on server-class (and some workstation-class) systems, usually those with multiple CPU sockets. It's a minor terminology issue, but it could lead to great confusion.

I can't find a really good picture, but here's one example of a board
with all three types: PCI (the short white slot near the center of the
board), PCI-X (the one green and two long white slots at the left hand
side of the picture) and PCI Express (the two black slots on either side
of the PCI slot).

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000X/X7DA8.cfm

.

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