Why is it that almost all top tier motherboard manufacturers tend to include so many erroneous options on boards based on nF3 and nF4 like PCI SATA or gigabit LAN instead of using the native chipset controllers? Or how about Gigabyte's recent addition of Firewire 800 to some of their boards (800Mb/s on the PCI bus...is that possible?). I'd personally rather see more Firewire 400 ports or Soundstorm instead. Did they all buy like a sh*tload of these controllers when they first came out, and now they're just trying to clear out inventory or something?
Also, does any of you know the peak bandwidth of PCIe (non graphics)? I'd love to have Firewire 800 (not that Firewire 400 isn't keeping me happy), but they only make PCI/PCI-X Firewire 800 cards as of now (I seriously doubt the PCI bus can maintain an 800Mb/s rate, and I'm not about to buy a server board with PCI-X). If the PCIe bus can actually support up to 800 Mb/s, then that gives me some hope I guess. I'm just thinking of the future when HDV camcorders and Blu Ray disc drives become standard (and relatively cheap). The extra bandwidth sure would come in handy in those cases.
Any thoughts?
Also, does any of you know the peak bandwidth of PCIe (non graphics)? I'd love to have Firewire 800 (not that Firewire 400 isn't keeping me happy), but they only make PCI/PCI-X Firewire 800 cards as of now (I seriously doubt the PCI bus can maintain an 800Mb/s rate, and I'm not about to buy a server board with PCI-X). If the PCIe bus can actually support up to 800 Mb/s, then that gives me some hope I guess. I'm just thinking of the future when HDV camcorders and Blu Ray disc drives become standard (and relatively cheap). The extra bandwidth sure would come in handy in those cases.
Any thoughts?