PCI vs PCI X vs PCI express

RobLogic · Post by **RobLogic** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 10:02 pm

right now i'm using a Windows PC for recording and i;m pretty sick of the constant crashes. i'm thinking of switching to a Mac. i'm currently using the RME hammerfall PCI card and i can't seem to find if it will work with a PCI X slot in a newer Mac. if anyone could help i'd greatly appreciate it!

thanks

Gentleman Jim · Post by **Gentleman Jim** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:35 pm

It depends on what you mean by a "newer mac."

*Tangent*
PCI, PCI-X, PCI Express. Three different things with annoyingly similar names. They are NOT the same things with different names. Got that? Good. And I don't think that any of them are interchangeable, but I have some vague recollection of someone on a message board somewhere saying they were. Of course, I may have dreamed that. Sorry to hedge like that, but my lawyers insist.

Here's a basic rundown of the three:
PCI - The oldest of the three, used in Macs and PC's. Probably not made much anymore; the slowest.

PCI-X - Mac only. A sad little format that Apple thought was an improvement, only to see PCI Express come out shortly thereafter and whoop its butt. Apple actually went from PCI only to PCI-X only, then abandoned PCI-X and went back to PCI only for a short time, finally throwing in the towel and going with PCI Express, (but not before calling it PCIe to further confuse people and piss them off), thus orphaning a large chunk of their own hardware and users.

If you haven't guessed yet, this is what I have in my G5, but I'm not bitter, because that just eats you up inside and makes you post ridiculously long screeds on internet message boards.

PCI Express, (or PCIe to the imbeciles at Apple) - This is the newest of the three, and is probably going to be the standard for a while. It lets more electrons through faster or some such nonsense, and your old PCI cards won't fit it. Or they'll melt if you turn the computer on, and your hair will fall out. Don't worry about plugging a PCI-X card in, because only 3 of them were ever made, and they're in some glass case in Cupertino, California like two-headed calves.

Anyhow, back to your situation.

If by a "newer mac" you're thinking of a Mac Pro, then all 3 of the slots on the current model are PCI Express. You're beat.

If you mean a G5 that you're going to buy used, then you're really screwed. Apple changed the specs on them 4 times, and good luck getting the eBay seller to give you a straight answer in time to make an educated decision. Just to give you enough false hope to ultimately frustrate you, here's a link to see what the differences are:

http://support.apple.com/specs/powermac/

I just found this so there's yet another level of confusion to aid in your nervous breakdown. Caveat Emptor.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86513

Happy computing,
Jim

skinsincyn · Post by **skinsincyn** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:36 am

Hi,

You should check RME's website for compatibility issues. In any case, I believe that PCI is a completely different physical format from PCI, so your card won't even fit in the slot.

UA is offering a free cross-grade on their cards, which is way cool. Wish others would do that as well.

Jeff White · Post by **Jeff White** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:50 am

skinsincyn wrote:Hi,

In any case, I believe that PCI is a completely different physical format from PCI, so your card won't even fit in the slot.

Now I am really confused!

If you go with any of the newer Intel Mac Models that will take a card (Mac Pro), it is most definitely PCIe (Express). The G5s did change their specs around a lot, but I *believe* that they never stepped backwards. I have the 4GB RAM version of the Dual 1.8ghz G5 and it is definitely PCI. Those released along side of this ancient piece of computing history I *believe* were PCI-X, but don't quote me on this.

Check the Wayback Machine (copy/paste entire URL as it won't take it because of the *):
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.apple.com

And here is the June 2004 update that split between PCI and PCI-X.

http://web.archive.org/web/200406221800 ... /powermac/

You should contact RME and see what they can do for you.

Jeff

RobLogic · Post by **RobLogic** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:40 am

thanks for all the info!

i acutally found this model mac for sale recently and that's what made me think about going apple as opposed to PC

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/p ... p_pci.html

i'm using Cubase 3 which i believe isn't compatible with intel macs, am i correct in reading that this particular mac is not intel? i'd hate to have to upgrade my whole system as everything but the dang computer works great.

best case scenario and this works for me would this model mac be enough power to do 16-24 tracks with minimal (nostly no) effects?

nacho459 · Post by **nacho459** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:34 am

Wait so the new PCI slots aren't backwards compatible? I almost bought a late model G5 the other day to replace my worn out old 850MHz G4. So how am I supposed to use my UAD-1 card?

This is the reason why I record on tape. I hate all this upgrading crap.

RobLogic · Post by **RobLogic** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:39 am

nacho459 wrote:This is the reason why I record on tape. I hate all this upgrading crap.

seriously, i need to fire up the tape machine again. anyone know where i can get some cheap 499 1/2''

digitaldrummer · Post by **digitaldrummer** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:16 pm

PCI and PCI-X are closely related. A properly designed PCI card should work in a PCI-X slot. the PCI-X standard includes a 64-bit extension and higher bus speeds but is backward compatible (unless the designer of the PCI card did not follow the original specs). PCI is a parallel bus architecture.

PCIe (PCI Express) is the latest and greatest and it is also a serial data transfer architecture that is physically incompatible with PCI and PCI-X.

Mike

RobLogic · Post by **RobLogic** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:52 am

i have the DIGI 9652

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/hammer/d9652.htm

hopefully that's a good one...

KyleHale · Post by **KyleHale** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:38 am

just go firewire and dont worry about the trouble-some PCI jibber. I use a fireface 800 and love it

RobLogic · Post by **RobLogic** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 2:01 pm

i totally would go firewire but i already have this

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/adi/adi8.htm

and i need the pci card.

E-money · Post by **E-money** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 4:06 pm

right now i'm using a Windows PC for recording and i;m pretty sick of the constant crashes.

I record on a Windows XP PC, AMD 2Ghz processor, 512 RAM that is rock solid.

I've been using this PC for recording for the better part of 2 years. It's nothing fancy, wasn't anywhere near top of the line when I put it together 2 years ago.

The thing is rock solid, I've never had it crash during a recording or during playback. It occasionally gets a virus or spyware from surfing porn, so I ghost it back to a known good image.

Don't spend money on a new Mac, there are so many things in the world more worthy of spending money on. Chances are your PC is fine, it probably just needs to have the OS reinstalled.

CurtZHP · Post by **CurtZHP** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 5:38 pm

Ditto what E-money said, except for the porn surfing part.

I've been running a Windows XP (SP1) machine for years, and it NEVER crashes. Of course, it's also not connected to the internet so it never sees the outside world.

P4 2.4GHz, 512 RAM

Andy Peters · Post by **Andy Peters** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:33 pm

RobLogic wrote:right now i'm using a Windows PC for recording and i;m pretty sick of the constant crashes. i'm thinking of switching to a Mac. i'm currently using the RME hammerfall PCI card and i can't seem to find if it will work with a PCI X slot in a newer Mac. if anyone could help i'd greatly appreciate it!

Here's the deal:

As noted by others, PCI was first. It is a parallel bus and its first versions had a 32-bit wide address/data path, a 33 MHz clock and a motherboard could provide 5V to an expansion board.

Later versions of PCI added 3.3V signaling, a 66 MHz clock and a 64-bit data path. For no apparent reason, the PC industry never adopted the wider/faster PCI slots for most desktop motherboards; it found most of its use in servers and embedded systems. The 64-bit version has a longer connector to support the wider bus. You CAN plug a 32-bit/33-MHz card into a 64-bit/66 MHz slot, although it will slow that bus down to 33 MHz. (Also note that PCs have more than one PCI bus.) You can also plug a 64-bit card into a 32-bit slot; it just looks funny because the unused pins on the card hang over the end of the slot.

(To get around the bus-slowdown issue, motherboards could use multiple PCI-to-PCI bridge chips, which let you isolate slows so that a 33 MHz card won't slow down 66 MHz cards. These chips are expensive and I suppose the PC companies decided that the average user didn't need 66 MHz cards anyway, and they really didn't want to explain why a 66 MHz card was so slow.)

PCI-X is a follow-on to PCI. The main innovation is that its clock frequency is bumped to 133 MHz. Due to the signal integrity effects of the higher clock speed, it's very difficult for a bridge to talk to more than one slot. So to support multiple PCI-X slots, a motherboard has to have one or more PCI-X-to-PCI-X bridges, which are chips with a PCI-X bus on one side connected to the system controller chip (north or south bridge) and two or more PCI-X buses on the other side. (A system controller bridge might have two PCI buses.) These chips are big, power-hungry and expensive, which probably explains why the adoption of PCI-X was stalled when PCI Express became available.

Again, you CAN plug a slower/narrower PCI card into a PCI-X slot.

(AGP is a faster PCI which supports only one slot on a motherboard unless the system controller has multiple AGP ports.)

PCI-Express looks exactly like PCI and PCI-X from a software point-of-view. However, instead of being a parallel bus clocked at 33 MHz, 66 MHz or 133 MHz, it's a serial bus with one or more "lanes," each of which has two unidirectional lines clocked at 2.5 GHz. Being serial, the number of fast connections is greatly reduced, which eases motherboard design. Four-lane PCIe has about the same bandwidth as PCI-X.

Because it is serial, you cannot plug a PCI (or PCI-X) card into a PCIe slot.

Some companies recognize that many people have PCI cards that they wish to keep using, even though new machines may not have PCI slots, so you can buy boxes that are PCIe to PCI expansion chassis. A card is installed into a PCIe slot on the PC and the serial signals are brought over to a chassis which has a PCIe-to-PCI bridge and some PCI slots.

So that's the basics ...

-a

RobLogic · Post by **RobLogic** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:41 am

awesome, thanks for esplaining all that!!

as far as keeping my pc is concerned, it just randomly crashes during sessions. as you can imagine that is a real pain in the butt. sometimes it works fine for weeks then it'll go for a stretch where it resets itsself 4 or 5 times in a row for days straight.

starting off with an OS reinstall might do the trick then?

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