PCI-X is surprisingly fast!

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

So I was cleaning a server the other day:

 

And I noticed the PCI-X slots on the board, i always thought this was interesting because back before PCI-E existed (this board was new enough to have both, but PCI-X came first)

the server space had PCI-X if u didnt want the slow 133mb/s regular pci slots

 

So PCI-X 2.0 has a WHOPPING 4.3GB/s and that was back in 1998!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X#:~:text=PCI%2DX%202.0%20offers%20(at,disadvantages%20compared%20to%20PCI%20Express.

 

for comparison pci-e 1.1 had a max of 8GB/s in 2003

 

SO my question is that If we use PCI-E for both consumers and servers, how come back in the day when PCI-X was the fastest slot, we only had this awesome thing on servers and never was on the consumer motherboards???

 

dont tell me that its too long lol.

 

 

For crying out loud even a 2.5 Gbit lan adapter wouldn't saturate the slot. Let alone any video card back then.

[Zando_]

Apparently Intel had some issues with it + it was for the high bandwidth servers/workstations need, not normal user PCs, so it never really caught on: 

 

"Intel gave only a qualified welcome to PCI-X, stressing that the next generation bus would have to be a "fundamentally new architecture".^[5] Without Intel's support, PCI-X failed to be adopted in PCs. According to Rick Merritt of the EE Times, "A falling-out between the PCI SIG and a key Intel interconnect designer who spearheaded development on the Accelerated Graphics Port caused Intel to pull out of the initial PCI-X effort".^[6] The PCI-X interface was however briefly adopted by Apple, for the first few generations of the Power Macintosh G5."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X

[AbydosOne]

29 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

So PCI-X 2.0 has a WHOPPING 4.3GB/s

I have a PCI-X video capture card lying around... makes me wonder what kind of video it was designed to capture if it could push bus speeds that quick...

 

(it worked in normal PCI just fine, so *shrug* about why it was made PCI-X in the first place)

[Radium_Angel]

31 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

so it never really caught on: 

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. The computer world is littered with cool ideas that fell victim to that

[Radium_Angel]

5 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

I have a PCI-X video capture card lying around... makes me wonder what kind of video it was designed to capture if it could push bus speeds that quick...

 

(it worked in normal PCI just fine, so *shrug* about why it was made PCI-X in the first place)

LasserDisc perhaps? Betamax for professional TV station conversion maybe

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

24 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

I have a PCI-X video capture card lying around... makes me wonder what kind of video it was designed to capture if it could push bus speeds that quick...

 

(it worked in normal PCI just fine, so *shrug* about why it was made PCI-X in the first place)

you can put a pci-x card into a normal pci slot but it brings down the potential speed from 4.3GB/s down to 133MB/s probably lowers the quality

[X-System]

@IBM_THINKPAD_R51 PCI-X 2.0 533MHz is very rare.

 

Very many old workstation/server boards have PCI-X 66MHz (528MB/s), 100MHz (800MB/s) and 133MHz (1.06GB/s).

[Ankh Tech]

9 hours ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

So I was cleaning a server the other day:

 

And I noticed the PCI-X slots on the board, i always thought this was interesting because back before PCI-E existed (this board was new enough to have both, but PCI-X came first)

the server space had PCI-X if u didnt want the slow 133mb/s regular pci slots

 

So PCI-X 2.0 has a WHOPPING 4.3GB/s and that was back in 1998!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X#:~:text=PCI-X 2.0 offers (at,disadvantages compared to PCI Express.

 

for comparison pci-e 1.1 had a max of 8GB/s in 2003

 

SO my question is that If we use PCI-E for both consumers and servers, how come back in the day when PCI-X was the fastest slot, we only had this awesome thing on servers and never was on the consumer motherboards???

 

dont tell me that its too long lol.

 

 

For crying out loud even a 2.5 Gbit lan adapter wouldn't saturate the slot. Let alone any video card back then.

you know you can get pci-x on boards that support pcie bifurcation, I remember seeing a website that sold pcie x16 to pcie x8 and pci-x

[PlayStation 2]

8 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

LasserDisc perhaps? Betamax for professional TV station conversion maybe

For what it's worth, a standard PCI form factor professional capture card would be able to handle Composite video just fine. Neither LaserDisc nor Betacam (or, anything along the lines of Composite NTSC/PAL 720x480/576i) captures would really need crazy bandwidth to properly capture it.

[Lord Vile]

On 11/3/2020 at 12:31 AM, Radium_Angel said:

LasserDisc perhaps? Betamax for professional TV station conversion maybe

Laserdisc was never a good idea. 

[DavidKalinowski]

24 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Laserdisc was never a good idea.

I thought it was awsome the first time I saw it (in 5th grade) It was like a space age record lol. but it also had VIDEO! my mind almost blew at that point