You are correct. PCI-X is NOT PCI-Express. PCI-X is an extention of PCI.PCI-X is backwards compatible with standard PCI provided the expansion card can accomodate both 5v and 3.3v signaling. This is a parallel "bus".
PCI-Express is a new I/O expansion technology based on a Serial P2P connection. They are not backwards compatible with standard PCI or PCI-X.
Many news sites have never seen a PCI-X slot and automatically use the PCI-X name to refer to PCI-Express. This is incorrect as the PCI-X name is already taken.
PCI-X is usually found on 2+ cpu motherboards for expansion purposes such as RAID controllers or Gigabit Ethernet controllers or anything else that requires more than 133mb/s of bandwidth. Its only recently that they've made a very minimal appearance on uniprocessor motherboards in the form of Socket 478 for P4, however not the A64. The reason for this is chipset.
Intel has the 6300ESB southbridge which has both a conventional PCI bus and a PCI-X 64-bit 66mhz bus. You can pair this southbridge up with the i875p for a great workstation board. On the A64 front, its either all desktop or all workstation/server. There is no uniprocessor A64 boards with PCI-X. The only Hypertransport->PCI-X tunnel chipset available at the moment is the AMD-8131/8132 which is currently found only on large EATX sized dual Opteron motherboards.
Ben Mattias Wadenstein wrote:
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, In The Night wrote:Some snippet from another news-site: The New PCI bus; PCI ExpressOne of the biggest changes to the PC this year will be the introduction of a new PC bus called PCI Express (PCIX). PCIX will replace the current PCI bus that has a speed of 133 Mb/s, with a new bus that has speeds that start at 250 Mb/s and can scale to over 1000 Mb/s. PCIX will also replace the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP). So new graphics cards will no longer have to fit in only one slot. Motherboards with the PCIX bus should start appearing this Summer, so new graphics cards that use the PCIX bus should start appearing shortly thereafter. Makes you wonder if we'll see new PCIX motherboards with AGP slots for those that want to keep using their AGP cards.If they're not totally wrong, then: PCI-X = PCI ExpressWell, they are totally wrong.PCI-X is basically a 64-bit pci bus commonly clocked at 100 or 133MHz. PCI Express totally different, based on a high-speed serial line protocol.I do manage a bunch of computers with PCI-X and I have seen PCI Express slots in person. They are very different./Mattias WadensteinBen Wang (benwang@synrax.com) wrote:In The Night wrote:Ben Wang (benwang@synrax.com) wrote:There won't be any A64 boards with more than PCI 32-bit 33mhz.Wrong. Snip from ananova:VIA just launched their first reference boards using PCI Express on the Athlon 64. Later this month, we also expect new Athlon 64 chipsets from others that will add PCI Express capabilities to the Socket 939 platform. While these new chipsets could migrate later to Socket 754 single-channel,the new chipsets will launch with Socket 939.This will further push the 754 to the value side of the Athlon 64 line.I am referring to PCI and its derivatives (64-bit PCI, PCI-X, etc). By more, I am referring to one of those derivatives and not PCI-Express. There is no doubt PCI-Express (which is not what is required here) will be available soon on the AMD platform. BenThis is a chipset limitation as all current chipsets only support PCI 32-bit 33mhz. I have never seen a 32-bit 66mhz slot (doesn't mean it doesn't exist but highly unlikely on the A64 platform), most of the 66mhz devices are connected to 64-bit slots. Look for motherboards with the AMD-8131/8132 chipset but you'll most likely find them only on dual Opteron boards in EATX form factor. Ben Michelle Konzack wrote:Am 2004-10-22 17:38:02, schrieb Kyuu Eturautti:I haven't tried network cards, but I have some Adaptec 29160 64-bit SCSIcontrollers in 32 bit slots and I haven't run into any problems on Athlon 64 or other systems with only PCI-32/33 slots.I know, but I need 64-Bit CPU and speed on network. I have checked more then 30 AMD-64 mainboards but they have only PCI-32/33 and not PCI-32/66. If I can find an AMD-64 mainboard with minimum one 66MHz PCI slot it will me help too. Greetings Michelle-- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-amd64-REQUEST@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org