Question regarding PCIe or PCI for new server

[Cpt. Duke]

I'm building a new server for our small workgroup. Here's the configuration -

Athlon64
2 GB RAM
(2) 320 GB SATA drives
Highpoint 2320 PCI-e 4x RAID card
Intel Server NIC card PCI

I'd like to use my motherboard's PCIe-16x slot for video, but I need to keep costs down, and considering it's a server I'm building, there's zero need for a nice video card. So that means I'm pretty much left with an ATI hypermemory card, or an nVidia Turbocache.

I like that PCI-e offers unshared bandwidth among other slots ... and I've configured the server so that the only PCI card I have is for the NIC ... thus reserving all the PCI bus speed solely for the NIC.

My question is - is it better to throw in a simple PCI card, that will end up sharing the bus speed available to the RAID PCI card, or get a PCIe card that will end up sharing a portion of the system memory?

Is it possible to go with a Hypermemory or TC solution that does not require sharing additional system RAM? Any way to disable sharing the RAM within the driver/applications?

Thanks so much!
Ryan

 

[Matthias99]

Why not get a PCIe NIC and then a PCI video card? That way you have both your 'fast' peripherals on independent PCIe links, and the only thing on the legacy PCI bus would be the video card.

 

[Peter]

Server boards usually have an onboard simple VGA, attached to the slowest bus (32-bit 33 MHz PCI), and plenty of other busses and connections (PCI-X, PCIE) that don't ever fight for bandwidth with the VGA.

Besides, VGA chips only consume bandwidth when written to. No display change activity, no bandwidth usage.

 

[Cpt. Duke]

Good points guys. Thank you.

 

[Cpt. Duke]

One more question - is there any way to disable the accessing of system RAM on the TurboCache or Hypermemory cards? Instead, opting to go with just the integrated RAM? In the drivers, or another utility?

Thanks

 

[aug1516]

The PCIE NIC is the best suggestion here and I would highly recommend you do it. You can pick up quality PCIE nics (Broadcom Xtreme Gigabit) for around $50 from HP.