PCI-X vs. PCI Express: SATA contoller and future cards

[kmrivers]

Whats up everyone?

I am in the process of deciding on a workstation configuration. My current decision is the dual core opteron platform. The board now are using the nForce4 Pro 2200 + 2050 and the AMD 8131 or 8132 chipsets. However, most only have PCI-X 100 or 133 slots.

I am personally looking at the TYAN Thunder K8WE. There is also some offerings from iWill, Gigabyte, as well as ASUS(K8N-DL). All except the Tyan, has one PCI-Express x1 slot.

While I really want the TYAN, it lacks the x1 slot which could be the deciding factor for me. What baffles me is that all the boards with there chipsets could fully support PCI-Express but they just don't. I could be wrong on that though.

My questions are: if I were to get one of the current boards, what kind of difference in performance am i going to see between PCI-X 133 and PCI-Express x1? In the area of say SATA or Audio card.

Secondly, It may be the end of the year when I build this. In that time can I expect the current slew of Dual Opteron boards to be refreshed and outfitted with PCI-express? Say PCI-X 2.0 (266 or 533)

I did read a comparison at Tom's hardware, and it concluded that PCI-ex only really gives more speed in a server atmosphere. Also that PCI-X 133 and PCI-ex offer the same bandwidth and in a 8 drive raid configuration you won't even come close to using up the bandwidth.

Sorry for the long post, just looking for some insight from real world folk.

 

[EatSpam]

I'm getting a Asus K8N-DL after the Opteron 265 chip goes down in price. It has no PCI-X slots, but has a x16 PCIe slot and an x1.

The dual Opteron boards are really being billed as server/workstation offerings. The K8N-DL has onboard sound thats probably ok. I'm 99% sure that the single x16 slot could be used with a PCIe RAID controller, so long as you are content with PCI graphics. That will be the configuration I'm going with.

The problem with PCI-X slots is that they tend to slow down their bus to accomodate the slowest card. If you put a PCI 33mhz/32-bit sound card in a PCI-X 133mhz/64-bit slot, the max speed you'll get is 33mhz/64-bit. That may or may not affect the speed of the other PCI-X slots in your system. It all depends on the board design.

What do you plan on using your system for?

Also, check out the MSI motherboards... they have dual core capable boards with AGP/5 PCI and also an SLI PCIe set up.