x-fi question

[kevinf2090]

i thought that the x-fi sound card is supposed to be pci-e x1. and how long will the original pci slot last

 

[ViRGE]

The rumors were that the X-Fi was in design as both a PCI and PCIe card. For the foreseeable future however, there won't be a PCIe X-Fi, nor will PCI slots be going away.

 

[Stangs55]

X-Fi development began way to far before PCIe to have been designed for it. (at least this is what I read on the Creative forums when I had the same question)

 

[BFG10K]

The latest information I've read is that Creative have no plans to release a PCIe version of the card at this stage.

 

[Auric]

Don't hold your breath...

Thus spoke General Manager and Vice President of Creative Audio products:

As far as PCI Express (PCIe) is concerned, which is the next bus, what we found is that the performance of PCIe is truly bad for audio. We are seeing four times degradation on the bus for audio. PCIe is designed for graphics and high data transfer, but audio sends very small packets and the overhead can be very big! Moving the data across PCIe is much, much higher than PCI. So what we have to do is go back to the drawing board and work on the transport part of the chip and re-design it to add more silicon to overcome some of the problems we had with PCIe. So for us to come up with a PCIe solution is going to take a while because we have to overcome the problems we're facing with that bus.

 

[V00D00]

Well that sucks. The card is a ripoff anyway..

 

[natto fire]

What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Captain_Howdy
What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

GREED

the almighty dollar, bling, bling

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Captain_Howdy
What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

Gigabit LAN + SCSI controller card = bottleneck.
Smaller connectors as well.
Why did we move to SATA for HDD's when PATA was fast enough?

 

[BFG10K]

What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

To be fair it is quite possible to saturate PCI these days.

As for Creative's PCIe comments...wow, I had no idea things were so grim.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: V00D00
Well that sucks. The card is a ripoff anyway..

Suit yourself. X-Fi is a nice upgrade from Audigy 2. Of course the haters will always cry "too expensive" but it is like all other new technology. You pay a premium to have it now.

I've been using X-Fi for about a month and I love it.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

To be fair it is quite possible to saturate PCI these days.

Especially since the PCI bus is shared; 1 X-Fi may not completely saturate it, but it adds up in the end.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Captain_Howdy
What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

True, we barely maxxed out AGP 8X. We are nowhere near maxxing out PCIE 16x!

And yes, the PCI bus can get saturated. Back in my SCSI days I had 2 PCI SCSI cards that were driving 18 SCSI HDs, and if more than 6 drives were in use the PCI bus crawled. I used to run the adaptec HD speed utlity to test the speed of each drive and when I had all 18 being tested the throughput was something like 10 mbs, and these were SCSI 320 LVD drives!

 

[Auric]

I would be tempted to get an X-Fi just for laughs even though I am quite happy with an Audigy. However the ill-conceived FlexiJack apparently puts the kaibosh on using both digital out and Mic in simultaneously (I use digital out to a receiver and a PC Mic for VOIP). I also prefer to continue using a gameport rather than host-based USB for a controller but that is fairly minor and understandable these days. The otherwise unneeded and certainly unwanted drive bay just serves to contribute to those limitations by taking up bracket space. Finally, my impression is that manual switching of software modes is actually necessary for optimal features and performance which I consider a step backwards. At the mo' I don't fiddle with software at all after an initial configuration following a driver install.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Why did we move to SATA for HDD's when PATA was fast enough?

For the thin and sexy cables

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

To be fair it is quite possible to saturate PCI these days.

As for Creative's PCIe comments...wow, I had no idea things were so grim.

i agree that it is easily possible to saturat the pci bus, just 2x15k rpm u320 hdds in a raid 0 u160 card and you are saturated, but who is?

for what most of the people around here use, the saturation level has not been hit, for us i feel the new busses are for greed because all the true hardcord workstation boards have pci-x.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: Captain_Howdy
What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

True, we barely maxxed out AGP 8X. We are nowhere near maxxing out PCIE 16x!

And yes, the PCI bus can get saturated. Back in my SCSI days I had 2 PCI SCSI cards that were driving 18 SCSI HDs, and if more than 6 drives were in use the PCI bus crawled. I used to run the adaptec HD speed utlity to test the speed of each drive and when I had all 18 being tested the throughput was something like 10 mbs, and these were SCSI 320 LVD drives!

has the agp 8x even been maxed out? i was under the impression the 7800gtx cards don't saturate the 8x bandwidth, but it was more of a move to push us enthusiasts into new boards, cpus and now ddr2.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: Captain_Howdy
What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

True, we barely maxxed out AGP 8X. We are nowhere near maxxing out PCIE 16x!

And yes, the PCI bus can get saturated. Back in my SCSI days I had 2 PCI SCSI cards that were driving 18 SCSI HDs, and if more than 6 drives were in use the PCI bus crawled. I used to run the adaptec HD speed utlity to test the speed of each drive and when I had all 18 being tested the throughput was something like 10 mbs, and these were SCSI 320 LVD drives!

has the agp 8x even been maxed out? i was under the impression the 7800gtx cards don't saturate the 8x bandwidth, but it was more of a move to push us enthusiasts into new boards, cpus and now ddr2.

I guarantee the 7800GTX cards will not max out an AGP bus. I predict close to 0%.

But seriously, if an AGP version of the 7800GTX were to come out, it would nearly max out the bus. Especially since it is shared with PCI cards.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: Captain_Howdy
What's with the current trend of wanting new busses, when the current ones are not even getting saturated by the devices on them?

True, we barely maxxed out AGP 8X. We are nowhere near maxxing out PCIE 16x!

And yes, the PCI bus can get saturated. Back in my SCSI days I had 2 PCI SCSI cards that were driving 18 SCSI HDs, and if more than 6 drives were in use the PCI bus crawled. I used to run the adaptec HD speed utlity to test the speed of each drive and when I had all 18 being tested the throughput was something like 10 mbs, and these were SCSI 320 LVD drives!

has the agp 8x even been maxed out? i was under the impression the 7800gtx cards don't saturate the 8x bandwidth, but it was more of a move to push us enthusiasts into new boards, cpus and now ddr2.

I guarantee the 7800GTX cards will not max out an AGP bus. I predict close to 0%.

But seriously, if an AGP version of the 7800GTX were to come out, it would nearly max out the bus. Especially since it is shared with PCI cards.

AGP Bandwith is not shared with PCI devices. In most chipsets the AGP is connected directly to the Northbridge whereas PCI devices are connected to the south.

The main benefits of PCIe over AGP are bidirectionalilty and flexibility (as well as greater power supply). PCIe allows much better usage of system memory by video cards and also allows reconfiguration to take advantage of things such as SLI. In general though, it's better to move to a new interface before we run out of bandwith on the old one, rather than after.

In general peripheral terms, moving away from a Bus in favour of point-to-point is definitely a good thing - you can have GBit Ethernet, RAID Controllers, USB and Firewire each on their own dedicated 150Mb/s connection rather than tacked onto a shared 133Mb/s bus. I'd be interested to know why it's worse than PCI for audio applications though.

 

[Ghouler]

Originally posted by: Auric
Don't hold your breath...

Thus spoke General Manager and Vice President of Creative Audio products:

As far as PCI Express (PCIe) is concerned, which is the next bus, what we found is that the performance of PCIe is truly bad for audio. We are seeing four times degradation on the bus for audio. PCIe is designed for graphics and high data transfer, but audio sends very small packets and the overhead can be very big! Moving the data across PCIe is much, much higher than PCI. So what we have to do is go back to the drawing board and work on the transport part of the chip and re-design it to add more silicon to overcome some of the problems we had with PCIe. So for us to come up with a PCIe solution is going to take a while because we have to overcome the problems we're facing with that bus.

Allright... I was actually wondering about that, too. So PCIe is basically not good for audio at present.
Oh well, matter of time I presume. When they sort out technicalities and PCIe becomes actual standard we will see everything runing on PCIe.
But you can always wait another year or so until new standard is established but then sth new is coming up and you may wait another year for this to become standard...

Anyway all I am waiting for now is my X-Fi, that should be here next week

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Woodchuck2000
I'd be interested to know why it's worse than PCI for audio applications though.

I really doubt it is; CL dragged their feet in a similar manner when coming out with a PCI sound card.

 

[GTaudiophile]

I'm building a new PC soon, so I want the latest and greatest. If the X-Fi is $60 more than an Audigy 2 ZS, I think I'll buy it.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
I'm building a new PC soon, so I want the latest and greatest. If the X-Fi is $60 more than an Audigy 2 ZS, I think I'll buy it.

I think ZZF has the zs for like $48 after rebate or something. It was $43 before.

Just letting you know the A2s have some nice deals out now.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

I think ZZF has the zs for like $48 after rebate or something. It was $43 before.

Just letting you know the A2s have some nice deals out now.

Great deals on the plat versions also.

 

[bob4432]

seeing as how i game with a mono headphone with mic and talk on teamspeak while gaming, i don't really think one would benefit me...but i just want to do some type of upgrading, it has been so long...