"Next Gen" mobos...why PCI slots??

[jmsabatini]

Does anyone really need PCI slots anymore? Is there anything useful out there that only exists in legacy PCI format?

It's becoming extremely annoying that mobo makers are putting out all these new boards, and NONE of them have all PCI-E slots.

I have a P6T6 WS Revolution board, which has no pesky PCI slots, but has anything else like that come out since?

Is the cost of putting all PCI-E slots on a board STILL cost prohibitive?

When are these damned PCI slots going to disappear forever?

Thanks for reading.

 

[dangerman1337]

This is when they are going to disappear from Motherboards at the current rate:

 

[Capt Caveman]

I like stilling using my Fatality X-Fi pci soundcard. Doesn't PCI have a separate path to the chipset than PCI-E, so you wouldn't have to share lanes with video cards, etc...?

 

[wirednuts]

i still have lots of pci stuff but i do agree. especially with the high end boards... if you have money to buy that crap, then you have money to upgrade your legacy crap.

besides, i REALLLLLY wish they would line up 2 or 3 pcie 1x slots behind eachother. so yeah the 1 is used normally, but the one behind it would act as an expansion slot for wifi cards or whatever. just use a ribbon cable and mount your card whever inside the case. i know it wouldnt be ideal but at least you could have more then 1 usable expansion slot on mini-atx boards and such.

 

[Red Squirrel]

What I hate about PCIe is there are too many different slot types. When buying a motherboard you really have to plan out what you'll put as expension as they'll only have like 2 of each, in very good cases. And yeah, I don't understand why have more than 1 PCI. It's useful to have but I still see boards that have like 4 PCI slots a 1x and a 16x.

Also I what I see a lot is motherboards that have two 16X slots, but one will be shared or something. What's up with that?

 

[paperwastage]

What I hate about PCIe is there are too many different slot types. When buying a motherboard you really have to plan out what you'll put as expension as they'll only have like 2 of each, in very good cases. And yeah, I don't understand why have more than 1 PCI. It's useful to have but I still see boards that have like 4 PCI slots a 1x and a 16x.

Also I what I see a lot is motherboards that have two 16X slots, but one will be shared or something. What's up with that?

it depends on the chipset

like the Sandy Bridge consumer, only 16 PCIe lanes to the CPU... you can use a NF200 chip to bridge 2x16 PCIe lanes from the 2 GPUs to reach teh 16 PCIe CPU lanes

not sure whether PCI is just a PCIe->PCI bridge

 

[wirednuts]

well i DO like how pcie is modular or whatever you call it. basically, its the same slot for 1x up to 16x, its just the length that changes. so if you need to use a 1x card but you only have an 8x or 16x slot available, it works. but thats a non-issue when you need a place for your 1x card but all thats left is 2 open pci slots that stare at you like "IM A DINOSAUR, DONT USE ME JUST REMIND YOURSELF I MIGHT AS WELL BE AN ISA SLOT".

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

PCI is fine. 3 PCIe slots are nice, but do I really need 6? So I say 3 min. You can make the rest PCI if you want because it won't matter to me.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think it's because there aren't enough PCI-E lanes to go around, on a full ATX board, to make all of the slots PCI-E. It takes 16 lanes for the primary gfx card, and then some PCI-E switch chips, to route 8 of those lanes to the secondary gfx card slot, and then that's all the PCI-E lanes that come from the CPU. So the remaining lanes all come off of the southbridge chip, which means that there are only 8 of them, and the sound chip, networking chip, extra SATA 6G controller, and USB 3 controller, use them. So that leaves precious few for the actual PCI-E x1 slots.

 

[stahlhart]

I have a P6T6 WS Revolution board, which has no pesky PCI slots, but has anything else like that come out since?

A few:

http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/Maximus_IV_Extreme/

Decided when I built this year that I was going to drop PCI slots for good, and did.

Amazing how they defy obsolescence, though. They're probably going to be right there alongside the cockroaches.

 

[Concillian]

I bet there's a bunch of analytical / troubleshooting boards that are PCI at the mobo manufacturing sites and they use PCI for testing.

Spending capital on crap like that is always a big hurdle for MFRs.

 

[stevech]

Reading the history of (and having lived it) the EISA/AT bus, then PCI, I'll speculate that there'll be no more parallel data busses in PCs.

But the industrial controls and telecom worlds will probably keep up the demand for mobo's for those markets. As they did for years after the demise of the consumer products for EISA.

 

[dawp]

I have only one on mine, but it's next to my primary pci-e so my video card covers it.there are far more wifi pci card than there are pci-e and very few of those are dual band, and if I had a choice I'd rather have an add-in wifi card that a usb adapter.

 

[Midwayman]

I still have a pci xfi card that I like to use. There are probably plenty of other cases of cards that haven't been updated significantly and the ability to use the cards you already have laying around is really useful. This is particularly true when you get into more niche hardware that doesn't get updated often.

 

[Rifter]

I think it's because there aren't enough PCI-E lanes to go around, on a full ATX board, to make all of the slots PCI-E. It takes 16 lanes for the primary gfx card, and then some PCI-E switch chips, to route 8 of those lanes to the secondary gfx card slot, and then that's all the PCI-E lanes that come from the CPU. So the remaining lanes all come off of the southbridge chip, which means that there are only 8 of them, and the sound chip, networking chip, extra SATA 6G controller, and USB 3 controller, use them. So that leaves precious few for the actual PCI-E x1 slots.

This is only true for the budget platforms, both Intel and AMD's high end/enthusiast platforms have 32+ PCIe lanes.


I do agree however that until even the budget platforms have more than 16 lanes you are not going to see PCI go away any time soon.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This is only true for the mainstream platforms, both Intel and AMD's high end/enthusiast platforms have 32+ PCIe lanes.


I do agree however that until even the mainstream platforms have more than 16 lanes you are not going to see PCI go away any time soon.

FTFY.

 

[lamedude]

I have no PCIe cards that aren't videocards. I have some PCI cards. Not in use but if need to use a backup video/network/sound card PCI slots are going to be more useful than PCIe slots.
Typed on PS/2 keyboard.

 

[MichaelD]

I have no PCIe cards that aren't videocards. I have some PCI cards. Not in use but if need to use a backup video/network/sound card PCI slots are going to be more useful than PCIe slots.
Typed on PS/2 keyboard.

Your PS/2 ports are next to go. Most manufs have already moved to just a single combo KB or MS PS/2 port.

I agree on the backup network/sound card in the PCI slot. I use active studio monitors as my computer speakers. The onboard sound in most boards is unbearably noisy. I have an old X-Fi I use...it's almost bearably noisy.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Believe it or not we have had calls within the last year from people still looking for boards with ISA support. Also we still get a number of people asking for PCI-x is still being asked for. Serial ports, Parallel, PS2, IDE the list goes on and on.

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

 

[MichaelD]

Thankfully, they make PCI-E adapters for serial/parallel/etc ports. Not PCI-X though, to my knowledge.

There are plenty of SMB's out there with 10-year old servers that use SCSI RAID cards that go in PCI-X slots. I worked on a farm of roughly 40 of them until about 18 months ago.

 

[Rifter]

FTFY.

I'll accept your "fix"

In the last ten years budget and mainstream have merged into one anyways. Now "budget" systems are still on the mainstream platform just with a weaker CPU.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I'm glad boards still come with them. I sometimes need a 2nd nic or a pci ide controller. They are not useless by any measure, but I don't usually want or need more than 1

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Believe it or not we have had calls within the last year from people still looking for boards with ISA support. Also we still get a number of people asking for PCI-x is still being asked for. Serial ports, Parallel, PS2, IDE the list goes on and on.

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

This is true. Many manufacturing setups are controlled through isa cards, serial ports, or parallel ports. Computer tech moves way faster than manufacturing tech and its cheaper to hunt down an isa board than change your whole setup or create some adapters and re do the software.