What mainboards offer two PCI segments (or more)?

theBH

Distinguished
Jul 15, 2002
12
0
18,510
A good year ago I build some PC's to run Avid DV Express. Everything was cool and running great with Asus P4B633 mainboard and P4 CPU.

Now the software needs upgrading (and some hardware external disk system too) and the guy from Avid said the motherboards needed to be replaced with boards supporting more than one PCI segment.

What mainboards do?

I would prefer to use the same CPU and RAM as I do now. there are a few computers and the costs will most certainly grow high anyway.

Does any P4 cards at all run two PCI segments or do I need to switch to Xeon?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by theBH on 02/23/04 03:21 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

jclw

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
1,255
0
19,290
Wait a month for the new Hance Rapids southbridge. It will work with the i875 and give you one 32/33 bus plus one 64/66 bus.

There are some specs on some upcomming P4 PCI-X Asus boards around. Google should turn them up.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX and Tualeron 1.2 @1.74 i815*
 

theBH

Distinguished
Jul 15, 2002
12
0
18,510
How is this compared to the PCI bus segmentation by E7505 Intel boards.

This is critical since we plan on running Mojo with external Firewire drives. We will need Mojo on its own bus segment and a second Firewire card on its own bus segment for each to coexist with the other.

I will check if a 32/33 bus is enough for one of them.
 

jclw

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
1,255
0
19,290
It's not as fast as the E7505 PCI buses because the E7505 has two PCI-X buses that come off of the northbridge, plus one 32/33 bus off the southbridge.

<A HREF="http://www.2cpu.com/Hardware/previews/msi_e7505_master/pics/specs.html" target="_new">Click for picture</A>

On Hance Rapids both PCI buses will run off the southbridge, and the bottleneck will be the northbridge <-> southbridge interconnect.

Sounds like you're going to want a E7505 Xeon board.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX and Tualeron 1.2 @1.74 i815*
 

jclw

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
1,255
0
19,290
1.70v gets me 1700.
1.75v gets me 1740.
1.825v gets me 1740 and lots of heat.

Conveniently I have to relax my memory timings above 1700 (142FSB) so I get best performance at 1700.

I'm using the x86 hacked BIOS on my TUSL2-C to allow the more aggresive memory timings and AGP4x at high(er) FSBs.

I don't remember the sSpec off the top of my head, but it's a tB1 stepping. I bought a 1.2 and it was a tA1 (would do ~1600), so I swapped it for a 1.2 tB1 out of a Dell in the office.

Unfortunately I'm in Halifax and it's in Toronto at the moment.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX and Tualeron 1.2 @1.74 i815*
 

jclw

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
1,255
0
19,290
BTW:

I have a VID pin mod on the processor to give me ~1.6v cold boot voltage.

sSpec is <A HREF="http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/details.asp?sSpec=SL6C8&ProcFam=49&PkgType=ALL&SysBusSpd=ALL&CorSpd=ALL" target="_new">SL6C8</A>

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX and Tualeron 1.2 @1.74 i815*