OT-PCI-x versus PCI

[Sean McCoy]

Hey all. I'm thinking of venturing out of the safety of my studio and doing some location recording, using my now-idle Creation Station. The Asus P4P800E motherboard has only PCI slots, but I have a spare PCIx-424 card that, paired with a cheap-as-dirt 2408, would make a perfect setup. The MOTU site says the PCI-x version of the card will work in 5v or 3.3v PCI slots. Seems weird to me, but what do I know?

Has anybody here ever actually installed (successfully) a PCI-x card in a PCI slot?

[RBIngraham]

Yes. A PCI-x card is just a PCI card. It will work in just about any PCI card slot. That is really just MOTU's name for it. Their PCI card was a 5v PCI slot only card.

As far as I have seen, there are damn few Windows based PCs around that have only 3.3v PCI slots. In fact in all the machines I've actually taken the time to pop the cover on I've found... well... none actually. They all had 5v slots. This is really Mac thing. At some point they switched the Mac Pro towers over to 3.3v PCI slots and then all the MOTU users had to go out and buy all new PCI cards from MOTU (or PCI-x as they call them) The newest Mac Pros have PCI-e slots I believe, but I'm not sure if they only have PCI-e or if they have some of each. I'll never throw that much money at Apple so I don't really care. This is why you can find so many MOTU 424 PCI cards on eBay, because the Mac heads had to keep buying new ones and then they sell off the old ones... more for us...

Anyway, I have both PCI and PCI-x versions of the 424 cards and they all work just fine for me. The old 324 cards are a lot more picky, but they can work in older machines like PIV units just fine. With some tweaking others have made them work in newer machines, but I just don't have time to kill, so I just went with 424 cards. My 324 cards I mostly keep as spare parts.

[Sean McCoy]

Thanks, Richard, that's helpful. I am one of those Mac heads who has now had to upgrade his MOTU card twice. I just migrated from my old G5 to a Mac Pro, and yes, it has only PCIe slots. This is why I now have a spare PCIx-424 that I'd like to put to use.

So do the PCI-x cards automatically adjust to the incoming voltage, or are they designed to not care?

[Bill Park]

One quick general computer warning... I would have thought that PCI is PCI. But in a recent conversation elsewhere, it was brought to my attention that some if not most of the new motherboards that include PCI and PCIe slots do not properly support the PCI format and that many PCI audio cards will not work in those slots. RME appears to be an exception, I don't know about any others, but MOTU, who lost my business many years ago and who make me very nervous... I would check with them for a specific motherboard recommendation before I spent any money.

[RBIngraham]

Thanks, Richard, that's helpful. I am one of those Mac heads who has now had to upgrade his MOTU card twice. I just migrated from my old G5 to a Mac Pro, and yes, it has only PCIe slots. This is why I now have a spare PCIx-424 that I'd like to put to use.

So do the PCI-x cards automatically adjust to the incoming voltage, or are they designed to not care?

The 5v and 3.3v slots have a gap in the pins in different spots. So if it's a 3.3v only PCI slot, then a 5v card will not even fit in the slot. It it's a 3.3v compliant card, it will usually have gaps to allow it to fit in both 3.3v and 5v slots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI

Actually I guess the PCI-x designation is an "official" standard. I just never ran into it before I started dealing with the MOTU cards. Guessing that's just because I've spent so little time with Mac towers.

[RBIngraham]

One quick general computer warning... I would have thought that PCI is PCI. But in a recent conversation elsewhere, it was brought to my attention that some if not most of the new motherboards that include PCI and PCIe slots do not properly support the PCI format and that many PCI audio cards will not work in those slots. RME appears to be an exception, I don't know about any others, but MOTU, who lost my business many years ago and who make me very nervous... I would check with them for a specific motherboard recommendation before I spent any money.

Actually I think what you are referring to has more to do with the Bios settings or lack of control over the bios settings than anything else.

It's just the nature of the beast in my opinion. There is always going to be something that will pop up and not be compatible. It happens with RME as well.... they just support their users better than MOTU. And probably have less issues over all I would guess. But they are not problem free either.

In the end, here is what I always recommend if someone is putting together a new system. First, find the software you really want to use. Then build the system around that. Find the sound cards and other hardware that work best with that software and then assemble the computer that will work with them. To me the computer is the thing that is the commodity item and I will toss it in order to make sound cards and/or software work that I want to use. It's also the biggest hit or miss item usually, so when I can, I will buy from someplace where I can just return it if it doesn't fit my needs. And then get something else.

Not saying this is you Bill, but I have seen too many folks buy the computer and then want everything to fit around that, so they choose their software and other hardware based on what works with the computer. In the days when I assembled my first DAW and the computer cost me around $3K+ just for the parts, I guess I can understand that. But when I can buy the parts or just go to Microcenter and pick something up for $500 now days that will often fit the bill just fine, I am less inclined to try and make things work to it and more inclined to just find one that does what I want it to do.

[Bill Park]

Actually I think what you are referring to has more to do with the Bios settings or lack of control over the bios settings than anything else.

This came from one of the popular builders of DAW computers and has nothing to do with BIOS. According to -him- (and I don't claim ANY knowledge on the subject) ..."...PCI is all but dead... ther is no native support on Sandy bridge or Sandy Bridge E.
only a handful of PCI cards will work in present PCI slots and then only certain motherboards...."

[RBIngraham]

This came from one of the popular builders of DAW computers and has nothing to do with BIOS. According to -him- (and I don't claim ANY knowledge on the subject) ..."...PCI is all but dead... their is no native support on Sandy bridge or Sandy Bridge E.
only a handful of PCI cards will work in present PCI slots and then only certain motherboards...."

Interesting. Although it's pretty easy to see the PCI support is definitely in the "legacy" stage, shall we say. But if you really want the MOTU stuff, they have a PCIe card, which works quite well in fact so there is no reason you couldn't run that system in a modern machine, if you wished to do so.

I won't argue that RME is not a better choice more often than not. But I've had good luck with the MOTU PCI based stuff and I like the fact that you can get up to 96 I/O channels on a single card. While the RME stuff usually works great, dealing with numerous card slots and having a motherboard to accommodate them all is getting to be a bit long in the tooth in my opinion. But USB2 seems to be where the development is happening now days. More and more it seems like no one except those that need large channel counts uses internal sound cards anymore. Everyone wants firewire or USB2, at least for those doing the typical home studio kind of work. And for that they usually work pretty well.

The MOTU hybrid stuff is actually pretty good, even though I never got excited about their early Firewire stuff. I'm sure the RME USB stuff would work well also.

[Dave Labrecque]

This came from one of the popular builders of DAW computers and has nothing to do with BIOS. According to -him- (and I don't claim ANY knowledge on the subject) ..."...PCI is all but dead... ther is no native support on Sandy bridge or Sandy Bridge E.
only a handful of PCI cards will work in present PCI slots and then only certain motherboards...."

Maybe I dodged a bullet, but FWIW, when I built my Sandy Bridge system last year around a new Intel mobo with three PCI slots, I had no problems installing my older RME PCI card (for my Digiface) as well as two UAD-1 PCI cards. Been working fine since.

Well, full disclosure: there are occasional hiccups when using the UAD-1's (I mostly use a UAD-2 PCIe card and only go to the UAD-1's if I need to), but the same thing happened with them on my prior system (a P4 box), so...

[Soundguy]

This came from one of the popular builders of DAW computers and has nothing to do with BIOS. According to -him- (and I don't claim ANY knowledge on the subject) ..."...PCI is all but dead... ther is no native support on Sandy bridge or Sandy Bridge E.
only a handful of PCI cards will work in present PCI slots and then only certain motherboards...."

I think the problem of "handful of PCI cards will work in present slots" is a result of PCIe/PCI hybrid mobos using a "PCI bridge" chip for the PCI slots (non native PCI support). As a result, there is more latency (and perhaps other busing issues) in the PCI slots than the PCIe slots on the same hybrid motherboard.

There are a lot of complaints from Pro Tools HD PCI card users who are having problems with Pro Tools "seeing" all of their PCI HD cards as a result of this "bridge chip" on new Windows computers. The computer can only see one or two cards, depending on mobo. So they have to buy a PCIe to PCI slot expansion chassis to upgrade to a new computer ... or upgrade to PCIe HD cards, a much more expensive option.

So maybe this is the same reason for other PCI cards not working as well on new hybrid mobos.

Soundguy