I use my machine primarily for music production, relying on a PCI soundcard. I am also currently looking at purchasing a OCI RAID controller. I'm a little concerned about having to replace these investments with the advent of AMD's new Socket (M?) Can anyone tell me if they've heard anything about PCI slots being phased out on the new boards? Also, when is the new socket scheduled for? Thanks!
I thought that sound cards had some kind of problems on PCIe, something about the data distorting badly. Uhm Ill just print a quote here of the thing I read: Whether or not that means a PCIe sound card is near now or not I do not know. That quote was 30th august of 2005.
Thanks for your reply - I was more asking about how long motherboards with PCI slots would be available for, because as far as I know the pro soundcard companies (RME,Echo etc) aren't even really looking into PCI-E solutions!
I should imageine they will stay around for a while yet. They are more suited to sound cards due to having lower latencies than PCIe, they have much lower bandwidth though. pros and cons..... Latency is more important for sound.
I certainly hope that this is the case - I reckon I'll risk getting the RAID card as well; at worst I can get a year or so out of it...
Can't see PCI disappearing for ages yet...even now in 2006 AGP is by far the numerically superior graphics system in pc's, and in most people's setups performs as well if not better than an equivalent (if there is one!) Tis a fairly low cost, but high performing solution...
PCI-E hasn't taken off yet fully with very devices available (some network cards, a few DVB cards, a few SATA and RAID cards and one or two SCSI cards). Until the majority of devices are available in a PCI-E format then PCI will remain. The thing is that everyone still has PCI slots and many devices don't need the extra bandwidth (10/100 network, consumer sound cards, wireless cards) so there's no real incentive to jump. EDIT: The new socket (I assume you're talking about AMD) is due Q2 2006 which means about April / May.
