Motherboards with 66MHz PCI slots

[Nelviticus]

I have a PCI RAID card (not PCI-e or PCI-X) which supports both 33MHz and 66MHz PCI slots. Obviously in a 66MHz slot it's going to work a lot faster than in a 33MHz slot but as far as I can tell my motherboard (an Asus P5B) only has 33MHz PCI slots. I wanted to buy a mobo with at least one 66MHz slot but it's proving very difficult as manufacturers just seem to mention the number of slots and not the speed.

My machine is a home desktop PC used for gaming and other home stuff and my CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo, so I'm after a consumer-oriented board rather than a server one.

I could just buy another RAID card that supports PCI-e but I already have a good PCI card and migrating the existing data from one RAID setup to another would be a nightmare, plus I'd quite like a new motherboard anyway as mine has too many minor niggles.

Can anybody recommend anything or do you only get 66MHz PCI slots on server motherboards?

Thanks

Nelviticus

 

[BadBigBen]

Hola Nelveticus,
according to ASUS :

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1178&l1=3&l2=11&l3=307&l4=0

the board does support 66mhz PCI cards...

the three PCI slots adhere to the v2.2 PCI standard...

more info at:

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

66mhz was introduced with v2.1 of the PCI standard...

hope this helps...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[Nelviticus]

Cheers Ben but I *think* that PCI v2.2 merely allows 66MHz as well as 33MHz, but most implementations are only 33MHz.

Not sure though!

Nelviticus

 

[wahnula]

Nelviticus,

Some good reading here:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/buses/types/pci.htm

From my readings the 66Mhz PCI slots are typically 64 bits. I don't know how much of a cause this would be for worry, as many servers depend on these 33Mhz buses (including mine) and it may just be a paper increase that you really wouldn't noticeably perceive, like when ATA133 took over ATA100...big deal!

The thing to remember is that dinosaur card will always do what you bought it to do, if you've been happy with its performance to date there's no reason to hate it all of a sudden. Plus I honestly doubt you will notice the difference. The PCI bus has carried many many RAID controllers and continues to do so. I wouldn't worry about it.

Tony

 

[Lemon13]

i wouldnt bother about that, pci troughput is up to 133 MByte/s at 32bit / 33mhz, the limitation are ur hdd´s.

 

[Nelviticus]

Well the drives attached to the RAID card are SATA-II which has a theoretical bandwidth of 300MB/s. Here's a link to a review of my card which indicates that the PCI bus is a bit of a bottleneck and that (at the time of the review, in July 05) 66MHz PCI slots were rare on consumer motherboards.

I haven't had the card long (got it cheap) and I'm mainly using it because of its fault tolerance. It would just be nice to have it perform faster than a stand-alone SATA drive too.

Thanks for the link Wahnula - according to that article, moving from a 32-bit, 33MHz PCI slot to a 64-bit, 66MHz one would quadruple the bandwidth. I suspect that 66MHz slots only appear on server motherboards though - I guess I should just put up with what I have or splash the cash on a new PCI-e card

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[BadBigBen]

PCI v2.2 merely allows 66MHz as well as 33MHz, but most implementations are only 33MHz.

no... PCI v2.1 does that...

PCI 2.1 introduced
> Universal PCI cards supporting both 3.3V and 5V
> 64 Bit slots and 66 MHz capability
> 32-Bit throughput @ 66 MHz: 266 MB/sec
> 64-Bit throughput @ 66 MHz: 532 MB/sec

as to the second part there I am not sure...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."