Socket 604 with PCIe

[fouressence]

I have two Socket 604 Xeon chips, and I'd like to find a motherboard for it that has at least one PCI-Express 16x. Pretty consistently, I'm running across boards that say something to the effect of, "1 (x8) PCI-Express on (x16) Slot." What's that mean?

I'm brand new to this world of server-spec components, so all I can really guess at is that there's an actual 16x PCIe on the board itself, with some sort of adapter down to 8x. As I said, me's brand new to this world, so if that guess there's dumb...

Thanks!

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: fouressence
I have two Socket 604 Xeon chips, and I'd like to find a motherboard for it that has at least one PCI-Express 16x. Pretty consistently, I'm running across boards that say something to the effect of, "1 (x8) PCI-Express on (x16) Slot." What's that mean?

I'm brand new to this world of server-spec components, so all I can really guess at is that there's an actual 16x PCIe on the board itself, with some sort of adapter down to 8x. As I said, me's brand new to this world, so if that guess there's dumb...

Thanks!

x8 on x16 slot, means that the slot is physically a x16 slot, but runs at x8 speed (or has the lines as a x8 would, not x16 lanes). What kind of machine are you building with these duallies?

 

[fouressence]

Thanks for the response. Let me give you a slight bit of background before I explain what kind of machine I'm building, otherwise it may seem rather odd...

Through an interesting selection of events, I was given a Dell Poweredge 1850 1U server. I have no terrible use for a server, and it was far too loud for general use, so I've decided to salvage the components from it. Primarily I'll use it as an audio workstation and video editing/animation workstation. I do like to play the occasional FPS too though...

If I were starting from scratch, I'd go with probably a core duo or the like, but what I've is what I have.


Anyway, to make sure I understand... This 8x on 16x thing is not compatible with normal 16x? In other words, I'd not be able to stick a decent video card in it?


Thanks 'gain!

 

[najames]

ATI Radeon with 16MB SDRAM

Slots
2 Total I/O slots
Riser 1 : 1 riser supports two PCI Express slots, 1 x4 slot and x8 slot
Riser 2: 1 PCI-X 64-bit/100MHz slot and one PCI-X 64-bit/133MHz slot.
Both slots are full-height, half-length

No games there as is. It looks like it might only work with SCSI drives too, got any. My Tyan dual Opty board only has a little dinky video chip on it too but has tons of ECC RAM slots, PCI-X slots, and a few PCIs, I use 1 + 4 250GB drives in Linux softraid 5. Pull the board out of the case and get something cheap that will hold an extended ATX board (I assume), I got a cheap Chieftech monster case drives in the top half and board in bottom, maybe look at a cheap 4U rackmount case too, or the YY cube case at directron. Replace the screaming loud heatsink/fans with something quiet (I used Thermaltake Quiet sumpins ??), get a server ATX power supply, and turn that baby loose. If you can't put in a regular video card in it forget games. Do your other stuff mentioned and LEARN about Linux, Solaris, and VMWare server perhaps. Make it edjubicational.

I have an unrelated college degree, tons of math and comp sci related classes, but I study about systems and test at home almost every night, especially when the wife is on vacation and my honeydo list is short. I do a lot of system work on my 4 CPU 16GB Solaris box at work and have 20 yrs of programming on almost every kind of platform imaginable. So many computers, so little time, and I am damn near 50!!! I want to retire at 55, hard work pays off.