PCI Express sound?

[Dameion]

I was wondering if anyone knows if any pci express sound cards are being made yet or if any are in the works?
What hardware (aside from video cards) is available for pci-e?

 

[mettleh3d]

what hardware besides video cards are made for AGP?
No, really, i don't know.

 

[w00t]

I bet they are gonna come out i bet but why do they need to?

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: w00t
I bet they are gonna come out i bet but why do they need to?

Because PCI-E is the successor of PCI.

Creative's X-Fi line is going to come in a PCI-E 1x or 4x version as well as PCI. There are RAID cards which benefit from PCI-E also.

 

[mettleh3d]

Plus, I hardly think people are gonna spend the extra money in buying an SLI board to have a gfx card AND a sound card. no no

 

[Cerb]

What does SLI have to do with sound cards?

 

[Continuity27]

The reason there aren't any sound cards out right now for PCI-E is because the PC audio market is stagnant. Sound cards don't use up all of PCI bandwidth yet, the only benefit of moving to PCI-E would be to get another device off the PCI bus.

Video cards are not the only hardware that needed better than PCI though. While it's true on home PCs, it was usually AGP + PCI, on more demanding platforms like servers, there was AGP, PCI-X and PCI. PCI-X was NEEDED for gigabit ethernet and hard drive arrays because PCI was too old and slow. PCI-E is the successor to all three, and much better in every possible way. PCI-E offers serial connections instead of one huge shared parallel connection like PCI/PCI-X, so nothing is shared.

That said, sound cards will eventually move to PCI-E x1, which is twice as fast as PCI. It might take a while though, because Creative is too much of a monopoly to innovate. PCI will have to live a while more.

 

[fr]

Originally posted by: mettleh3d
what hardware besides video cards are made for AGP?
No, really, i don't know.

You must think PCI-E is just like AGP and that it is only used for video cards. You are wrong.

 

[casualsax3]

Originally posted by: mettleh3d
Plus, I hardly think people are gonna spend the extra money in buying an SLI board to have a gfx card AND a sound card. no no

The SLI boards have 2 PCI-E 16x slots. Most PCI-E boards also have a few 1x and 4x's. A soundcard wouldn't use one of the 16x slots.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Continuity27That said, sound cards will eventually move to PCI-E x1, which is twice as fast as PCI. It might take a while though, because Creative is too much of a monopoly to innovate. PCI will have to live a while more.

Twice the speed down, and twice the speed back up. OK, so not so important for sound cards, but still pretty nice.

 

[jlswier1988]

What would be the difference between PCI-E and PCI the bus speed isnt going to make the difference on how well your sound is. or whatever thats all determined by the sound card if you ask me if they put something as stupid as a PCI-E sound card on the market then it wouldnt sell. Because then you have to invest in the money for a SLI which is ridiclous. Just stick with good old PCI and not PCI-E Sound Cards. Sounds like quite a joke if they do that crap.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Cerb

Originally posted by: Continuity27That said, sound cards will eventually move to PCI-E x1, which is twice as fast as PCI. It might take a while though, because Creative is too much of a monopoly to innovate. PCI will have to live a while more.

Twice the speed down, and twice the speed back up. OK, so not so important for sound cards, but still pretty nice.

PCI-E could be useful if you're pulling in and sending out enough channels of 24/192, not so much that the PCI bus is limiting us now (it would take over 200 channels of 24/192 to saturate the PCI bus), but moreso that even 50 simultaneous ins and outs (100 channels) uses up enough PCI capacity that if you're trying to route those streams to a hard drive also on the same bus, you're going to be in trouble.

However, anyone dealing with that many channels of audio is probably using firewire or some other proprietary connection along with an external "audio interface."

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: jlswier1988
What would be the difference between PCI-E and PCI the bus speed isnt going to make the difference on how well your sound is. or whatever thats all determined by the sound card if you ask me if they put something as stupid as a PCI-E sound card on the market then it wouldnt sell. Because then you have to invest in the money for a SLI which is ridiclous. Just stick with good old PCI and not PCI-E Sound Cards. Sounds like quite a joke if they do that crap.

You're being a bit short sighted. Eventually, PCI slots are going to be like ISA slots are today (or even a year ago, when there was maybe one P4 MB with an ISA slot, that was about as easy to find as bigfoot). PCI-E will be the standard interface of choice on motherboards, and everything will either attach by PCI-E or by an external interface (Firewire or USB2). Sound cards may not use PCI-E bandwidth (at least not the stuff found outside of large recording studios), but that doesn't mean that PCI-E sound cards will be useless, especially in the future. With all the interest in future-proofing every other thing to the greatest extent possible, I don't see why all the animosity exists toward non-video card PCI-E devices.

 

[jlswier1988]

i was just giving my opinion anyways about bottleneck as well. the processor would be to quick for the video card wouldnt it?

 

[Ike0069]

It seems to me that some people are confused with the whole PCI-e thing.

An SLI MB has two PCI-ex16 slots, as well as 1 or more PCI-e x1 or x4 slots.
Video cards use the x16 slots, while everythng else, including sound cards, will use the x1 or x4 slots.
Eventually MB's will be manufactured with no PCI slots, only PCI-e slots.

 

[jlswier1988]

Im sure everyone knows that but he is asking if they will be coming out with PCI-E Sound cards. thats what he is asking.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: jlswier1988
Im sure everyone knows that but he is asking if they will be coming out with PCI-E Sound cards. thats what he is asking.

And the answer is a clear and resounding YES.

 

[jlswier1988]

And thats why i said it would be retarded to do that. considering you have to go for SLI if that came out and toy really had the urge to buy something that retarded.

 

[jlswier1988]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: jlswier1988
Im sure everyone knows that but he is asking if they will be coming out with PCI-E Sound cards. thats what he is asking.

And the answer is a clear and resounding YES.

And as clear as i said it would be retarded ;P <3

 

[n yusef]

You don't have to get SLI to have a PCIe sound card. SLI motherboards have 2 PCIe x16 slots, but regular PCIe mobos have 1 x16 slot, and some PCIe x1/x4 slots. Look at the MSI Neo4 Platinum. It has 1 x16 slot for a video card, and an x1 and x4 for other peripherals, like a sound card.

 

[ProviaFan]

You are making absolutely no sense now. Stop before you get too far behind.

Edit: sorry, should have quoted. I refer to "jlswier1988", not "n yusef"

 

[Continuity27]

Originally posted by: jlswier1988
And thats why i said it would be retarded to do that. considering you have to go for SLI if that came out and toy really had the urge to buy something that retarded.

Nobody has to buy SLI for PCI-E sound cards. SLI has NOTHING to do with PCI-E x1 slots, which is what sound cards would use.

It is not "retarded" to develop sound cards that actually gain so much in quality as to render PCI obsolete for that purpose. It's actually better for us. It won't happen with Creative any time soon though.

 

[Dameion]

Originally posted by: jlswier1988

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: jlswier1988
Im sure everyone knows that but he is asking if they will be coming out with PCI-E Sound cards. thats what he is asking.

And the answer is a clear and resounding YES.

And as clear as i said it would be retarded ;P <3

There are several motherboards out there that use pci-e x16 for video, which doesn't necessarily mean it's an SLI board (2 x16 slots). As another posted said, pci-e will become the next standard for connecting to a motherboard, just as pci is today. While there is no need to use the bandwith of pci-e for sound, the fact remains that pci will eventually go the way of isa, and will eventually become the standard. For example, Shuttle makes SFF kits that have one x16 slot and one x1 slot...with no pci slots at all. Anyway, does anyone know if there are any actually being made now?

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: jlswier1988
And thats why i said it would be retarded to do that. considering you have to go for SLI if that came out and toy really had the urge to buy something that retarded.

You need to be able to actually comprehend what is being said before you call something retarded. Apparently you still do not understand the difference between PCI-e x1/x4 and x16. Maybe take a reading comprehension class also.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2321 got me thinking that it would make sense to put sound encoding onto the graphics card. I much prefer nVidia SoundStorm over SBAudigy any day, so why not? nVidia clearly have the technology...