PCI-X / PCI Express x4
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Last response: in Components
EvilC0P
June 30, 2006 2:48:55 PM
elbert
June 30, 2006 3:56:35 PM
Quote:
Between a PCI-X and a PCI Express x4 NIC... a gigabit NIC to be more precise.would the PCI express x4 perfome lot better ( throughput (spelling ;/ )) than a PCI-X NIC ?
NIC's dont require anymore bandwidth than PCI can supply so you'll not see any increase over either. The PCI Express may show a small Nanosecond less latency but, latency being measured in Milliseconds, you'll not notice it so save that slots for a part needing low latency.
EvilC0P
June 30, 2006 4:01:47 PM
so you think, with a pci express card i could maybe a ms or 2 if i am lucky?
i have sensitive data being transfered over a 100mbps dedicated line. i have a ping of 36ms in average with the host. if i could improve this by 1 or 2.. that would be amazing. the data has to reach asap the destination
you think it could be better with a pci express nic?
i have sensitive data being transfered over a 100mbps dedicated line. i have a ping of 36ms in average with the host. if i could improve this by 1 or 2.. that would be amazing. the data has to reach asap the destination
you think it could be better with a pci express nic?
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EvilC0P
June 30, 2006 6:08:02 PM
ya, pci-x, and x4, because it's all i got available in the Dell Workstation. pos motherboards they have...
and the PCI-X... i would like to avoid it.. just because it's not that clear...
but a pci-x nic gigabit starts @ ~155$ cnd and the only nic pci express x4 i have seen, is from Intel and it costs ~250$ cnd
so was just trying to find out if i could gain a ms or 2 with one of these cards.
thx for ur input
and the PCI-X... i would like to avoid it.. just because it's not that clear...
but a pci-x nic gigabit starts @ ~155$ cnd and the only nic pci express x4 i have seen, is from Intel and it costs ~250$ cnd
so was just trying to find out if i could gain a ms or 2 with one of these cards.
thx for ur input
Pain
June 30, 2006 6:37:22 PM
Fox_granit
June 30, 2006 7:12:22 PM
EvilC0P
June 30, 2006 7:16:08 PM
it's a fiber connection, 100mbps full duplex line. from montreal to chicago.
ping of 36ms from Mtl <-> Chicago
right now, all those dell workstations are using the onboard gigabit nic atm. so basically, i was just wondering if the interface could help get a lil packet get to the town a lil faster.
and the 2 interfaces i have available is a pci-x and a pci express x4 slots
and 1 ms would be great.
ping of 36ms from Mtl <-> Chicago
right now, all those dell workstations are using the onboard gigabit nic atm. so basically, i was just wondering if the interface could help get a lil packet get to the town a lil faster.
and the 2 interfaces i have available is a pci-x and a pci express x4 slots
and 1 ms would be great.
jap0nes
June 30, 2006 7:33:43 PM
Quote:
it's a fiber connection, 100mbps full duplex line. from montreal to chicago.ping of 36ms from Mtl <-> Chicago
right now, all those dell workstations are using the onboard gigabit nic atm. so basically, i was just wondering if the interface could help get a lil packet get to the town a lil faster.
and the 2 interfaces i have available is a pci-x and a pci express x4 slots
and 1 ms would be great.
i think you're good with your current setup...
how's traffic over that line?
EvilC0P
June 30, 2006 8:25:34 PM
jap0nes
June 30, 2006 8:54:55 PM
Quote:
right, traffic is low. 3-4mb/secbut soon, it should go over 17-19 approx.
but what matters, mainly for us, is the speed of transmission. if using a standalone card instead of onboard and using a faster interface could gain us a ms or 2. then it's great. it's the detail im trying to figure out.
i dont think it will show any improvement, as the onboard controller actually is a pci controller. Even if you use a dedicated x4 pci-e card, it will probably be connected to the southbridge, the same bus that your onboard card, then, it will not reduce latency or something.
Like someone said, it COULD show some nanoseconds improvement, which could low your time from ~35 to lets say ~34.5.
You can contact your link company and ask them if they can reduce that latency. Is it fiber optics? I've seen 25ms latency with fiber optics links
elbert
July 1, 2006 10:51:06 PM
Quote:
The PCI bus moves 32 bits @ 33 MHz = 1,056 Megabits per second.We have a Linksys Gigabit NIC installed in a standard PCI slot
on an ASUS P4SGX-MX micro-ATX PGA478 motherboard, and
it keeps up with the on-board GHz LAN port on our
P4C800-E Deluxe i875 motherboard.
The only feature a PCI GHz NIC might be lacking
is "jumbo frames", but this may also be true
of on-board GHz LAN ports.
What he said!
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/
The PCI bus moves 32 bits @ 33 MHz = 532 Megabits per second. The PCI-X bus is a revision to the PCI standard that doubles the clock speed (from 66 MHz to 133 MHz) and hence the amount of data exchanged between the computer processor and peripherals. The theoretical maximum amount of data exchanged between the processor and peripherals PCI-X is 1.06 Gb/s, compared to 532 Mb/s with standard PCI.
When I say PCI its really both in that PCI-X is generally backward compatible with PCI, meaning that you can, for example, install a PCI-X card in a standard PCI slot but it will be limited to the standard PCI bus speed.
elbert
July 1, 2006 11:16:59 PM
Quote:
so you think, with a pci express card i could maybe a ms or 2 if i am lucky?i have sensitive data being transfered over a 100mbps dedicated line. i have a ping of 36ms in average with the host. if i could improve this by 1 or 2.. that would be amazing. the data has to reach asap the destination
you think it could be better with a pci express nic?
The PCI Express 4X wouldn't even make 1ms differance as the difference in PCI-X and PCI Express is in nanoseconds. The PCI Express only has a few nanoseconds advantage and the 36ms is made up almost completely of the distance form your NIC to where the NIC your sending the data.
Now to lower your 36ms you could invest in fiber optics as copper twisted pair line from your NIC to your router, switcher, or DSL box could reduce it as much as 2 or 3ms. The whole package will set you back about $500 so I advice against it but if money is no object it will lower your access time.
If your connection from your PC to the data's destination is fiber optic line then you'll have to find a way of sending data faster than light.
Madwand
July 1, 2006 11:57:15 PM
Quote:
Thus, a PCI-X adapter will not fit into a
standard PCI slot, but standard PCI adapters
will fit into a standard PCI-X slot. Whether
the latter will work correctly depends on
several things, like chipset support etc.
p.s. I wouldn't trust anything I find at Wikipedia,
particularly if it's technical data you are seeking.
http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pcix_20/
Quote:
The present revision adds two new speed grades: PCI-X 266 and PCI-X 533, offering up to 4.3 gigabytes per second of bandwidthMany PCI-X cards are backwards compatible with PCI, and do indeed fit in PCI slots. (Personal experience, no reference.)
elbert
July 2, 2006 12:48:26 AM
Quote:
> The PCI bus moves 32 bits @ 33 MHz = 532 Megabits per second. I think your arithmetic is off:
32 bits @ 33 MHz = 1,056 megabits per second
divided by 8 bits per byte = 133 megabytes per second
(got a calculator? roughly, 30x30=900
so 32x33 would be larger than 900)
This upper limit to the PCI bus is the same number
as ATA/133 = 133 MB/second, and that was one
of the main reasons for the initial speed of SATA-I
of ATA/150 = 150 MB/second.
You are correct about the different flavors
of PCI-X:
one increased the signal rate to 66 MHz, and
the second increased the signal rate to 133 MHz.
Also, the PCI-X bus transmits 64 bits per cycle,
instead of 32.
In order to transmit 64 bits per cycle,
a larger slot was needed, hence the term
"PCI-Xtended"). See the ASUS P5WDG2-WS
motherboard, for an example of both PCI
and PCI-X slots:
http://www.asus.com
Thus, a PCI-X adapter will not fit into a
standard PCI slot, but standard PCI adapters
will fit into a standard PCI-X slot. Whether
the latter will work correctly depends on
several things, like chipset support etc.
p.s. I wouldn't trust anything I find at Wikipedia,
particularly if it's technical data you are seeking.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/
In theory your correct but In traditional PCI protocol, devices often add extra clock cycles, or wait states, into their transactions to hold the bus if the target PCI device is not ready to proceed with the transaction. Simply Multipling the 2 is nothing like you'll see in the real world. 532 Megabits is a accurate reflections of real world transfer.
PCI-X eliminates use of wait states, except for initial target latency.
Madwand
July 2, 2006 3:23:46 PM
elbert
July 2, 2006 11:04:36 PM
Quote:
532 Megabits is a accurate reflections of real world transfer.
Funny, I've measured at least 98 MB/s (784 Mb/s) sustained network transfer rate using a PCI NIC.
Would that be the oldest 32 bit PCI at 33mhz or 1 of the several newer versions? There is several just PCI, none PCI-X versions, which includes the 32bit at 66Mhz, 64 bit at 32Mhz, and some which HP and or compaq made proprietary. Finding a 486 mobo with PCI was a hard find and would be needed to show the real world limitations on the origanal PCI and its bad wait states. Now newer PCI-X can reach the 133MB/second with only 32bit at 33Mhz but only due to new PCI versions eliminating the need for wait states and yes older PCI cards do work but require new drivers.
elbert
July 2, 2006 11:49:41 PM
Quote:
Same here: we routinely get about 100 MB/secondwith Promise PCI RAID controllers, both on-board and
expansion card. For planning purposes, we deduct
about 10-15% for hardware overhead, which leaves
a throughput ceiling of ~ 120 MB/second
(133 - 10%).
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/
Correct me if im wrong but june 22 1992, the release date of PCI, hard drive controllers were lucky to reach 33 MB/second. Did this card work on Unix, DOS, or windows 3.x because it sounds like a real gem. While its true PCI replaced older ISA and EISA slots due to only a in theory though put of 32 MB/second. PCI has come a long way as at one time VESA local bus out performed it even at only 100MB/second due to its direct access to the systems resources. If PCI was able to do 133MB/s at the same time as VESA local bus, could only do 100MB/second, how did VESA hold off PCI's major adoption until 1995?
The first versions of PCI could only achieve real world through put of 532 Megabits per socond, about half of VESA's real world though put, but double EISA's. In 1995 PCI took off because windows 95 allowed its use of multiple devices with 1 IRQ. AGP ended VESA local bus not the origanal slower PCI with its protocol and, devices often add extra clock cycles, or wait states, into their transactions to holding the bus if the target PCI device was not ready to proceed with transactions.
Madwand
July 3, 2006 4:14:48 AM
Quote:
532 Megabits is a accurate reflections of real world transfer.
Funny, I've measured at least 98 MB/s (784 Mb/s) sustained network transfer rate using a PCI NIC.
Would that be the oldest 32 bit PCI at 33mhz or 1 of the several newer versions? There is several just PCI, none PCI-X versions, which includes the 32bit at 66Mhz, 64 bit at 32Mhz, and some which HP and or compaq made proprietary. Finding a 486 mobo with PCI was a hard find and would be needed to show the real world limitations on the origanal PCI and its bad wait states. Now newer PCI-X can reach the 133MB/second with only 32bit at 33Mhz but only due to new PCI versions eliminating the need for wait states and yes older PCI cards do work but require new drivers.
Ordinary modern 32-bit 33 MHz PCI. I.e. a nothing-special slot as you'd find in any relatively recent consumer MB. PCI 2.x probably. There's little point in talking about PCI on a 486 MB at this point; that's not relevant.
elbert
July 3, 2006 3:28:37 PM
Quote:
532 Megabits is a accurate reflections of real world transfer.
Funny, I've measured at least 98 MB/s (784 Mb/s) sustained network transfer rate using a PCI NIC.
Would that be the oldest 32 bit PCI at 33mhz or 1 of the several newer versions? There is several just PCI, none PCI-X versions, which includes the 32bit at 66Mhz, 64 bit at 32Mhz, and some which HP and or compaq made proprietary. Finding a 486 mobo with PCI was a hard find and would be needed to show the real world limitations on the origanal PCI and its bad wait states. Now newer PCI-X can reach the 133MB/second with only 32bit at 33Mhz but only due to new PCI versions eliminating the need for wait states and yes older PCI cards do work but require new drivers.
Ordinary modern 32-bit 33 MHz PCI. I.e. a nothing-special slot as you'd find in any relatively recent consumer MB. PCI 2.x probably. There's little point in talking about PCI on a 486 MB at this point; that's not relevant.
True but just stating PCI can do 133MB/second is a bit misleading. Its important to note that placing say a new 100MB/second NIC in an old system may not yeild 100MB/second. The NIC would have to be backwards compatible to PCI 5V 1.1/1.0 and can mislead the consumer into a false performance gain.
Madwand
July 3, 2006 3:40:07 PM
Quote:
Its important to note that placing say a new 100MB/second NIC in an old system may not yeild 100MB/second. The NIC would have to be backwards compatible to PCI 5V 1.1/1.0 and can mislead the consumer into a false performance gain.
IMO, it's much more important to note that even a cheap PCI gigabit NIC in a relatively modern board can indeed hit around 100 MB/s raw networking throughput, and to admit flat-out technical errors when you've made them.
bull2760
July 3, 2006 3:59:47 PM
EvilC0P
July 3, 2006 4:58:24 PM
Quote:
You will not see a difference in speed going over WAN line. You have to remeber that your only as fast as your connection I seriosly doubt that your WAN connection is 100MB or for that matter 10MB. Now if your doing it over a LAN than yes you would see a difference. But for a WAN forget it.thx, makes sense. we do have a point to point line, that is a 100mb line full duplex. and our internet line is a 10mb full duplex. but my main concern is the work related one, over the 100mb. anything to gain a ms eheheh
Madwand
July 3, 2006 6:04:30 PM
EvilC0P
July 3, 2006 6:28:07 PM
weekendwarrior
July 3, 2006 7:36:53 PM
Good God. It's like a Witchdoctor conference in here. Fling some more random Voodoo around.
The man is asking about the difference between PCI-X and PCI-Express. PCI-X is an extension to PCI. It is a very versatile slot. It can run at 33 or 66 bit, and 33MHz up to 533MHz. It's something you see in servers and workstations. It is backward compatible with PCI, and the cards and slot can adjust speeds to match the hardware they are connected to.
The PCI bus is shared. Your drive controllers, PCI slots and I/O ports all share the bus. That means 133 MB/sec across the bus at any given time is the fastest it can go. So during a file transfer, your computer has to balance bandwidth between retrieving data from the NIC, and writing it to the drive. On most PCI-X boards, the PCI-X slots have their own controller, and are not bound by the PCI bus limits. On more expensive, serious boards, drives, NICs, etc, are each on their own bus. It is important to note that most end-user PCs (from the PCI era) are neither expensive nor serious.
PCI-Express is serial, and not a shared bus. Each port has dedicated bandwidth that it does not share with anything but the CPU.
This is all kind of a moot point. Your network connection allows 12.5 Megabytes per second of traffic each way. It doesn't matter if your gigabit card can put out 125 Megabytes per second, because you aren't getting more than 12.5 over the fiber.
What's the CIR of your fiber pipe?
The man is asking about the difference between PCI-X and PCI-Express. PCI-X is an extension to PCI. It is a very versatile slot. It can run at 33 or 66 bit, and 33MHz up to 533MHz. It's something you see in servers and workstations. It is backward compatible with PCI, and the cards and slot can adjust speeds to match the hardware they are connected to.
The PCI bus is shared. Your drive controllers, PCI slots and I/O ports all share the bus. That means 133 MB/sec across the bus at any given time is the fastest it can go. So during a file transfer, your computer has to balance bandwidth between retrieving data from the NIC, and writing it to the drive. On most PCI-X boards, the PCI-X slots have their own controller, and are not bound by the PCI bus limits. On more expensive, serious boards, drives, NICs, etc, are each on their own bus. It is important to note that most end-user PCs (from the PCI era) are neither expensive nor serious.
PCI-Express is serial, and not a shared bus. Each port has dedicated bandwidth that it does not share with anything but the CPU.
This is all kind of a moot point. Your network connection allows 12.5 Megabytes per second of traffic each way. It doesn't matter if your gigabit card can put out 125 Megabytes per second, because you aren't getting more than 12.5 over the fiber.
What's the CIR of your fiber pipe?
elbert
July 3, 2006 11:42:13 PM
Quote:
Its important to note that placing say a new 100MB/second NIC in an old system may not yeild 100MB/second. The NIC would have to be backwards compatible to PCI 5V 1.1/1.0 and can mislead the consumer into a false performance gain.
IMO, it's much more important to note that even a cheap PCI gigabit NIC in a relatively modern board can indeed hit around 100 MB/s raw networking throughput, and to admit flat-out technical errors when you've made them.
Not really because any consumer can look at a NIC rating but knowing its limits with other components is key to building a good network. The fact is many networks have old systems, I use a old pentium as a storage system. My son uses a Pentium 2 for a CS1.6 server so dont think old systems are only good for land fills.
I guess staying out of discussions you know little about isn't important as I was correct him that simply multiply 32bit @ 33Mhz for all PCI slots is wrong.
Arlaine
July 4, 2006 12:34:18 AM
elbert
July 4, 2006 12:45:16 PM
Quote:
Here, for those still interested, I'll add some information as well to the PCI, PCI-X, and PCI-E conundrum.
Edit: Oh yes, and my apologies, as I just remembered, this information is a tad old (2004).
Thanks for the information and pay attentions to typical Bandwidth which on average was about half of the maximum bandwidth else in 1994 PCI would have replaced VESA local bus. The 32bit 30Mhz could have replaced VESA local bus if it would have gotten any where close to 100MB on avarage. While some bring no new information in their posts to support their view its always good to see those that do.
Thanks again Arlaine for this was helpful.
Madwand
July 4, 2006 8:31:51 PM
Quote:
it's a trading software. stock market/contracts/bunds related.so everything is logged and all.
I think the original question's been answered, that it's highly unlikely that changing the workstation NIC will improve latency materially. You're probably already using a good on-board gigabit NIC going through a 1x PCIe interface, and it's highly unlikely that adding lanes or going to PCI-X will help materially.
(FWIW, I've measured pings of <1 ms on an internal network going through a short-hop wireless bridge (e.g. between 0.9 and 1.1 ms). If consumer wireless can have latency < 1 ms, then the differences between PCIe, 4x PCIe, and PCI-X aren't likely to help you much.)
Talking to your service provider(s) might help, or at least inform you more about your options, if any.
An alternative is to look at the overall business solution, and analyze that for any potential improvements. E.g. 1 how does latency affect the business problem. Can it be tuned so that it isn't so latency-sensitive? E.g. 2, is the logging done serially or in parallel with the transport? If it's serially, then might you be able to improve throughput by improving the logging performance?
Considering the track record of this thread, the specificity and likely inflexibility of your business solution, etc., it's improbable that we'll be able to directly help you here, but it's another approach to consider.
elbert
July 4, 2006 9:08:20 PM
Quote:
Good God. It's like a Witchdoctor conference in here. Fling some more random Voodoo around.The man is asking about the difference between PCI-X and PCI-Express. PCI-X is an extension to PCI. It is a very versatile slot. It can run at 33 or 66 bit, and 33MHz up to 533MHz. It's something you see in servers and workstations. It is backward compatible with PCI, and the cards and slot can adjust speeds to match the hardware they are connected to.
The PCI bus is shared. Your drive controllers, PCI slots and I/O ports all share the bus. That means 133 MB/sec across the bus at any given time is the fastest it can go. So during a file transfer, your computer has to balance bandwidth between retrieving data from the NIC, and writing it to the drive. On most PCI-X boards, the PCI-X slots have their own controller, and are not bound by the PCI bus limits. On more expensive, serious boards, drives, NICs, etc, are each on their own bus. It is important to note that most end-user PCs (from the PCI era) are neither expensive nor serious.
PCI-Express is serial, and not a shared bus. Each port has dedicated bandwidth that it does not share with anything but the CPU.
This is all kind of a moot point. Your network connection allows 12.5 Megabytes per second of traffic each way. It doesn't matter if your gigabit card can put out 125 Megabytes per second, because you aren't getting more than 12.5 over the fiber.
What's the CIR of your fiber pipe?
True and I explained the only advantage between the 2 for NIC's is a few nanoseconds less latency for the PCI-E slot. I also explained the few nanoseconds less latency wouldn't make any differance and the PCI-E slot would be better used for a card needing the extra low latency in the PCI-E.
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