PCI Express sound?

[fierydemise]

I remember reading that creative was working on a PCI-E soundcard, the zenith if I remember correctly

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: 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...

Nice in theory, but I am not all out in favor of more corporate control (DRM). DVI shall remain on my desktop for as long as possible, screw HDMI. :|

 

[CrashX]

I think some people think PCI-e is just a replacement for AGP. Meaning it's just a high bandwidth port for video only.
That's why jlswier1988 keeps saying you have to have SLI to use a PCI-e sound card. Cause he thinks that is the only way for a motherboard to have two PCI-e slots.
He doesn't realize that PCI-e COMES in different size, ie x1, x4, x8 and x16, UNLIKE PCI and AGP.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: 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."

Heh. I just hope PCI-E offers a simple way to get rid of latency and bus use issues that have plagyed sound for years now on PCI (like skipping during heavy (PATA) drive activity, which I have still never gotten fixed on my PC).

 

[Dameion]

My understanding is that all pci cards share the same (limited) bandwith, which causes the slowdowns. Pci-e is supposed to operate differently. I think the the x1, x4, and x16 refer to the number of lanes dedicated to that slot, thus the amount of bandwith available to that card.

 

[Continuity27]

Originally posted by: Dameion
My understanding is that all pci cards share the same (limited) bandwith, which causes the slowdowns. Pci-e is supposed to operate differently. I think the the x1, x4, and x16 refer to the number of lanes dedicated to that slot, thus the amount of bandwith available to that card.

PCI is a shared bus, all components on that bus share the bandwidth. PCI-E is not shared. PCI-E x1 has twice in bandwidth in both directions as PCI does. AGP 1x had twice the amount PCI did. PCI-E x16 has 32 times the bandwidth in both directions as PCI, and double the bandwidth of AGP 8x.

Gigabit ethernet is much faster than PCI allows, many hard drive arrays need much more bandwidth than PCI allows. Because of these types of components, PCI-X for the server/workstation professional market was developed, but that too is just a large shared bus. PCI-E is better in every way.

 

[jr9k]

I remember waiting for ages for a PCI sound card and a PCI modem when I bought my first PC back in 1996. Finally I bought an ISA sound card and an external modem!

I suppose that chances of finding one soon are very slim, as new mobos still have PCI slots (and integrated sound), but they will finally appear.

HAHA two sound cards in SLI would rock!

 

[JAGedlion]

Considering jlswier1988 doesn't seem to want to listen to what anyone else says, think of it this way and come to the conclusion yourself.
PCI express was in how many motherboards before SLI was even on the market?
Let us take a look at those motherboards, how many PCI express slots do you see?
Yea one is longer than the others but there are usually 2 or 3 in there.
Now SLI still doesn't exist, so what is that small black slot for?
It says on the spec sheet PCI express! PCI express is rather unique in that slots can range from 1x to 16x maybe even more!
Graphics cards need alot of throughput so for them we use 16x slots, or 8x if you use sli iirc.
Sound cards? Gigabit ethernet? RAID cards? These dont need as much bandwidth. Sound cards really only need a 1x slot.
You can still put them in a 16x slot if you feel like it (isn't pci express awsome) but it will still only use as much bandwith as it wants. So instead of going for an sli board which gives you another 8x (or rather 2 8x slots iirc), we can just put the sound card into our little 1x slot and be happy.
If we think about it, doesn't this make sense? After all, why would an entire bus standard require possibly proprietary technology from a graphics card manufacturer? There was a reason that the MCA bus never caught on. (If you dont know your history its because IBM made it proprietary although I guess it can be argued that there were other reasons)

 

[R3MF]

it was said that nVidias Soundstorm required 200MB/sec bandwidth for dolby digital encoding, and could thus never be implemented as a PCI sound card. they will find a need for PCI-E 1x bandwidth.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: JAGedlion
Considering jlswier1988 doesn't seem to want to listen to what anyone else says, think of it this way and come to the conclusion yourself.
PCI express was in how many motherboards before SLI was even on the market?
Let us take a look at those motherboards, how many PCI express slots do you see?
Yea one is longer than the others but there are usually 2 or 3 in there.
Now SLI still doesn't exist, so what is that small black slot for?
It says on the spec sheet PCI express! PCI express is rather unique in that slots can range from 1x to 16x maybe even more!
Graphics cards need alot of throughput so for them we use 16x slots, or 8x if you use sli iirc.
Sound cards? Gigabit ethernet? RAID cards? These dont need as much bandwidth. Sound cards really only need a 1x slot.
You can still put them in a 16x slot if you feel like it (isn't pci express awsome) but it will still only use as much bandwith as it wants. So instead of going for an sli board which gives you another 8x (or rather 2 8x slots iirc), we can just put the sound card into our little 1x slot and be happy.
If we think about it, doesn't this make sense? After all, why would an entire bus standard require possibly proprietary technology from a graphics card manufacturer? There was a reason that the MCA bus never caught on. (If you dont know your history its because IBM made it proprietary although I guess it can be argued that there were other reasons)

AGP only really caught on because it was genuinely necessary. There was plenty of opposition, but gamers won out, with AGP basically being a must-have just as the GF[1] was about to come out. Sound being pretty stagnant (much thanks, though, to VIA and M-Audio, for giving us some stuff that doesn't suck and has decent support) is what is keeping it from taking on PCI-E. I know I'm not the only one in the world with skipping problems (yes, I've messed around with PCI latency quite a bit), but they don't seem to care. A switch-based bus (PCI-E is kind of a shared bus and kind of point-to-point) should offer relief from such things, but we'll have to wait a year, or more, or find a PCI-E USB/FW card.

Oddly enough, PCI-E is largely catching on due to super expensive and super cheap cards. Professional 3D cards and the new budget cards are the only ones really using what PCI-E has to offer (and, while still too slow for my tastes, I'd recommend a 6200A in a heartbeat, compared to a 9600SE or 5200U). Yes, there's GbE, but that is handled in new chipsets.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: JAGedlion
Graphics cards need alot of throughput so for them we use 16x slots, or 8x if you use sli

A small nitpick: Not all boards will nudge down the speed if you use both slots... Mine has two 16x slots regardless. (yeah, so now I'm a Tyan K8WE fanboy! hehehe)

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan
Nice in theory, but I am not all out in favor of more corporate control (DRM). DVI shall remain on my desktop for as long as possible, screw HDMI. :|

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they will screw up so that DRM is effectively optional. I quite like the idea of reducing the number of plugs! (not to mention the size of the plugs, I bet they could fit atleast three HDMI connectors on a graphics card)

As for DRM... I'm thinking of boycotting both DVD and game producers. Buying their products can be a very frustrating exercise. I need a no-CD crack to run Battlefield 2 (I don't know why yet, I suspect SafeDisc no longer supports SCSI DVD-ROM), and apparently the European release of the fifth Simpsons season features a 30+ second "thou shall not steal" non-skippable promo. I exchanged mine for the American version, so I hope that release is better. (this probably marks the end of my DVD collection ) Whatever happened to "thank you for buying our product"?

No, as far as I'm concerned, they can all burn to a crisp. Heck, I'd even supply the gasoline. (regardless of the steep oil prices)

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: BikeDude

Originally posted by: ProviaFan
Nice in theory, but I am not all out in favor of more corporate control (DRM). DVI shall remain on my desktop for as long as possible, screw HDMI. :|

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they will screw up so that DRM is effectively optional. I quite like the idea of reducing the number of plugs! (not to mention the size of the plugs, I bet they could fit atleast three HDMI connectors on a graphics card)

As for DRM... I'm thinking of boycotting both DVD and game producers. Buying their products can be a very frustrating exercise. I need a no-CD crack to run Battlefield 2 (I don't know why yet, I suspect SafeDisc no longer supports SCSI DVD-ROM), and apparently the European release of the fifth Simpsons season features a 30+ second "thou shall not steal" non-skippable promo. I exchanged mine for the American version, so I hope that release is better. (this probably marks the end of my DVD collection ) Whatever happened to "thank you for buying our product"?

No, as far as I'm concerned, they can all burn to a crisp. Heck, I'd even supply the gasoline. (regardless of the steep oil prices)

No kidding... its like a slap in the face to people who buy the DVDs. Cause I'f I'm going to back-up my movies I'm certainly not going to back up that part of the DVD. Asses.