Any Pcix 4x sound cards exist?

Jfan · 30 Sep 2006 at 16:01

Just wondering if it is possible to get a decent sound card that would go in the
4x pci express socket of my asus an832 sli deluxe moby

just tried the onboard sound and its horrible, in bf2 anyway

and im a bit limited for space as i have 2 7900gto's

if there aint a 4x pcix sound card then why not? i think it would be a great idea to produce a sound card for this slot

Codmate · 1 Oct 2006 at 11:44

Why?
It would be pretty tough to make a soundcard that made use of the extra bandwidth!

The existing PCI spec is more than adequate for soundcards.

Jfan · 1 Oct 2006 at 20:54

Jfan said:
just tried the onboard sound and its horrible, in bf2 anyway
and im a bit limited for space as i have 2 7900gto's

MeatLoaf · 2 Oct 2006 at 07:57

Jfan said:
Just wondering if it is possible to get a decent sound card that would go in the
4x pci express socket of my asus an832 sli deluxe moby

just tried the onboard sound and its horrible, in bf2 anyway

and im a bit limited for space as i have 2 7900gto's

if there aint a 4x pcix sound card then why not? i think it would be a great idea to produce a sound card for this slot

What mobo do you have

smids · 2 Oct 2006 at 08:30

PCIe (PCI-E/PCI-express) is not the same as PCI-X - PCI-X is a legacy slot which is a looong PCI slot basically and was designed for server RAID cards etc as it increased the 133MB/s limit to 533MB/s for PCI cards.

Now a PCIe slot, x1 no less, provides 250MB/s - this is waaaaaaay overkill for a soundcard and even this can power a proper RAID array to its fullest.

PCI - 133MB/s (33Mhz/32bit) (parallel connection - data goes one way, then the other i.e. not simultaneous)
PCI-X - 533MB/s (66Mhz/64Bit) (parallel)

PCIe x1 - 250Mb/s (both ways - data can travel both ways at the full rate simultaneously i.e. 250MB/s each way! rather than 133MB/s one way.
PCIe x4 1.0GB/s
PCIe x8 2.0GB/s
PCIe x16 4.0GB/s.

All PCIe slots are also backwards compatible - i.e. a 16x slot can take 16x, 8x, 4x, or 1x cards.

8 slot can take 8x, 4x, 1x, but NOT 16x.etc

I wish they would make a PCI sound card too - then we wouldn't have the need for a legacy PCI slot when usually we have empty PCIe x1 slots available but the market is slow to change.