PCI 2.1 vs. 2.2

[Anarchist420]

On wikipedia, it says this about PCI 2.2: "Incorporated ECNs, and improved readability"

What are ECNs and what does improved readability mean? Improved readability of what?

Also, is it true that nvidia used a different standard for the pci slots on nforce based motherboards?

What was it about Nforce PCI slots that made it so X-fis didn't work properly with them?

I'm waiting for a voodoo5 PCI Mac edition, and I was worried that my M4N72-E Deluxe wouldn't play nice with it, since it's an nforce 750a chipset.

 

[Anarchist420]

Bump.

 

[nenforcer]

ECN is simply an "Engineering Change Notice" which follows an ECR, an "Engineering Change Request". It is just a change or tweak to the existing PCI specification that has been approved or even voted upon by the PCI-SIG working group. PCI 2.2 should be fully backwards compatible with older cards even if they are not PCI 2.2 compliant.

That being said there are clearly cards which are exceptions and exhibit odd behavior on some PCI chipsets. In the old days of a single PCI bus it was possible to saturate the 133Mb/s max with a video card, sound card, network card and TV card for instance, especially if one of the cards didn't play nice or occupied to much resources.

Tell me you are not building a hackintosh system with a 3DFX Voodoo 5 and an nVidia AMD chipset? What CPU are you using?

 

[Ross Ridge]

It means nothing, its just refering to the wording of the standard itself. You don't have to worry about PCI revisions. You can stick any PCI card into any motherboard that it will fit into. For the most part PCI is fully forwards and backwards compatible. If the card isn't compatible with the motherboard, at least as far what PCI standards cover, then it will be keyed differently and won't fit. You'll have a very hard time finding a PCI card that won't fit into your motherboard.

There's no particular reason to believe that the PCI Voodoo 5 won't work with your motherboard. As far the PCI spec goes everthing should be fine, and video cards aren't susceptible to the problems X-Fi cards have had with the nForce chipset. You might run into a driver compatibility problem though. As far as I know there are no Voodoo 5 drivers that are compatible with Windows Vista or 7. You'll need to be running Windows XP or earlier.

 

[Anarchist420]

ECN is simply an "Engineering Change Notice" which follows an ECR, an "Engineering Change Request". It is just a change or tweak to the existing PCI specification that has been approved or even voted upon by the PCI-SIG working group. PCI 2.2 should be fully backwards compatible with older cards even if they are not PCI 2.2 compliant.

That being said there are clearly cards which are exceptions and exhibit odd behavior on some PCI chipsets. In the old days of a single PCI bus it was possible to saturate the 133Mb/s max with a video card, sound card, network card and TV card for instance, especially if one of the cards didn't play nice or occupied to much resources.

Tell me you are not building a hackintosh system with a 3DFX Voodoo 5 and an nVidia AMD chipset? What CPU are you using?

I have a PII 555Black. I'm going to flash the Voodoo5 to a PC BIOS.

Thanks for replying man

It means nothing, its just refering to the wording of the standard itself. You don't have to worry about PCI revisions. You can stick any PCI card into any motherboard that it will fit into. For the most part PCI is fully forwards and backwards compatible. If the card isn't compatible with the motherboard, at least as far what PCI standards cover, then it will be keyed differently and won't fit. You'll have a very hard time finding a PCI card that won't fit into your motherboard.

There's no particular reason to believe that the PCI Voodoo 5 won't work with your motherboard. As far the PCI spec goes everthing should be fine, and video cards aren't susceptible to the problems X-Fi cards have had with the nForce chipset. You might run into a driver compatibility problem though. As far as I know there are no Voodoo 5 drivers that are compatible with Windows Vista or 7. You'll need to be running Windows XP or earlier.

Thanks Anyway, there are 3dfx drivers for Vista/7. Even for x64. I was surprised when I found out there were, but they exist.