Will a USB 3.0 PCI Card Work With a Socket 940 AMD Server Board?

[Immitem]

Hello there.

I am building myself a retro workstation/gaming pc and have gone with the Asus K8N-DL with dual Opteron 285s and Windows XP SP3. It is for running older 3D animation software that will not run on anything new and for a little bit of gaming because why the hell not?

I went with the DIYPC Silence-BK Black Dual USB3.0 ATX Mid Tower Silent Computer Case and got to thinking after eyeing up the USB 3.0 cable for the front panel: Can such older hardware support a PCI USB 3:0 card/hub? I have found no information from Asus but from personal experience can anyone offer their own input/knowledge?

A bunch of the cards say that they support Windows XP but will the old (2005) socket 940 motherboard have any architectural quirks that will render it incompatible? I will not have easy access to the internet with the PC and intend to copy most files/drivers/games from my main computer to the older one and do not want to be standing around all day with USB 2.0 yet a lot of reviews point to how fickle the PCI hubs are.

Any experience, knowledge, or wisdom will do.

Thanks!

 

[BFG-9000]

Should work fine so long as you have drivers and select a card with a header for that USB 3.0 plug. nForce chipsets may have had issues with SATA and ethernet but PCI and PCIe mostly worked fine. There's no PCI or PCIe switch chip on that board or needed as there are only two PCI slots and 4 PCIe lanes besides the x16.

Keep in mind if you get a 32-bit 33MHz PCI card it limits a single USB 3.0 port (theoretically 625MB/s) to 133MB/s shared among all PCI devices (including onboard ones). If you get a PCIe x1 card it would be better, but still limited to 250MB/s because it's limited to PCIe 1.0.

Note that some 3rd-party USB 3.0 chipsets like Renesas/NEC inexplicably require the Intel USB 3.0 xHCI driver to work, so will only work at USB 2.0 speeds in XP using the EHCI driver.

An alternative is to install a 2nd NIC on the main computer and share a folder with the retro one using fixed IP addresses (or a spare router) on its own little 2-computer network. Only gigabit speeds (theoretically 125MB/s) but nearly free and at least no swapping thumbdrives around.

 

[Immitem]

Should work fine so long as you have drivers and select a card with a header for that USB 3.0 plug. nForce chipsets may have had issues with SATA and ethernet but PCI and PCIe mostly worked fine. There's no PCI or PCIe switch chip on that board or needed as there are only two PCI slots and 4 PCIe lanes besides the x16.

Keep in mind if you get a 32-bit 33MHz PCI card it limits a single USB 3.0 port (theoretically 625MB/s) to 133MB/s shared among all PCI devices (including onboard ones). If you get a PCIe x1 card it would be better, but still limited to 250MB/s because it's limited to PCIe 1.0.

Note that some 3rd-party USB 3.0 chipsets like Renesas/NEC inexplicably require the Intel USB 3.0 xHCI driver to work, so will only work at USB 2.0 speeds in XP using the EHCI driver.

An alternative is to install a 2nd NIC on the main computer and share a folder with the retro one using fixed IP addresses (or a spare router) on its own little 2-computer network. Only gigabit speeds (theoretically 125MB/s) but nearly free and at least no swapping thumbdrives around.

More than I could have asked for; Thank you very much for that info.