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Hello, has anybody worked both those cards to tell me any differences in latencies, etc? Will there be any improvements in their new PCIe versions, what do you think? (I think the RME PCIe card is out already, has anybody tried it?) Thanks!

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Guest Mon, 07/09/2007 - 13:42

HI,

1) PCIe is NOT native on any system we have.

all present subsystems (motherboards)
all use a PCI to PCIe bridge period.
regardless of how the manufacturer impliments the card. FYI i dont think anyone is using PCIE to PCI bridge on the cards any more. that was very early on.

until there is a native PCIe hub on the motherboard
we will be forced to have IRQs and IRQ steering.
(PCI spec)

this unfortunately requires both an OS re write and a hardware change.

Scott
ADK

anonymous Mon, 07/09/2007 - 15:55

ADK audio wrote: HI,

1) PCIe is NOT native on any system we have.

all present subsystems (motherboards)
all use a PCI to PCIe bridge period.
regardless of how the manufacturer impliments the card.

So if I'm getting this right, is all this PCIe thing just a commercial trick to make us spend our bucks and update? Does the same apply to graphics cards as well?

Also, got any idea if by getting the pci version of tc powercore will give me any better performance results than getting the firewire version? TC claims they both have the same processing power and both come with the same plugs, but is there gonna be any difference in latency?

cfaalm Tue, 07/10/2007 - 03:41

Apple ditched PCI slots in favour of PCI-E on all their PowerMacs. So if you get a machine like that, you have no choice really but to buy PCI-E cards (native or not) unless you go the FW route.

The nice thing about the FW Powercore would be to use it on any computer with a FW port e.g. laptop, Mac, PC without opening the case.

So far all new PC motherboards, even the quadcore compatibles so far, feature a couple of regular PCI slots still.

Guest Tue, 07/10/2007 - 06:51

Panos wrote: [quote=ADK audio]HI,

1) PCIe is NOT native on any system we have.

all present subsystems (motherboards)
all use a PCI to PCIe bridge period.
regardless of how the manufacturer impliments the card.

So if I'm getting this right, is all this PCIe thing just a commercial trick to make us spend our bucks and update? Does the same apply to graphics cards as well?

Also, got any idea if by getting the pci version of tc powercore will give me any better performance results than getting the firewire version? TC claims they both have the same processing power and both come with the same plugs, but is there gonna be any difference in latency?

yes and no.

PCIe does allow for larger bandwidth but not nessesarily faster thruput
yeah i know huh?

lets take an RME MAdi. its 64 i/o
while with PCIe i may not be able to decrease my latency, RME could probably now make it a 80 i/o card yet maintain the same buffer setting of a previous PCI with 64 i/o.

the cloest thing to native we have for PCIe is the 16x video card slot
it connects direct to the north bridge (1 only) but it still has to use pci to pcie bridge. (stinking gamers always get the tech)

as to the FW powercore i have had back luck with them and they NEVER gave me the same # of plug ins as PCI/PCIe
they do seem to work better on a mac but still not the same # of plugs.

Scott
ADK