PCI Express - Semantics 2004-08-13 - By Dave Angelini
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I passed up on quite a deal with Dell this weekend all because I was not
happy with the video card, the timing, or the cost.
Basically, what I was looking at was an Dimension 8400 with 3.6 GHz
processor, 2x160 RAID1 7200 RPM HD's, 2 GB DDR2 533 Mhz RAM, two 16X DVD
drives (one was R/W), 18 LCD monitor, WinXP Pro, MS Basic, Sound Blaster
Audigy2 card, 5.1 surround sound speakers, 3 year warranty...all for around
$2800 (normally $3500).
I passed for two reasons:
The first is that the video card was a 128 Mb Radeon X800 SE. The SE is a
cut down version of the XE that is only sold to Dell. Basically, if they
some yeild loss on the GPU, then isolate out the damaged pixel pipelines
(from 16 to 8) and sell it as an SE.
The second is that I just didn't want to spend that much money right now.
I've been watching Dell for quite some time, and basically every 3 months
they have a tremendous deal. I would imagine the next will be towards late
November as I would assume their fiscal quarter ends in December. By that
time, some of the price pressure on PCI Express should have dropped some.
If I plan to only do this once every 4 to 5 years, then I can wait another 3
months and do some more shopping around.
Afterall, waiting is the best part.
Dave
-- -- Original Message -- --
From: "Roman Ormandy" <roman@(protected)>
To: <truespace@(protected)>
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 12:19 AM
Subject: Re: [TSML] PCI Express - Semantics
> PCI Express is not realy a bus anymore but a point to point communication
> network like internet itself. Intel does not emphasize this too much just
> yet, but it will become more clear with PCI Express AS which is a full
> switching fabric, very suitable for parallel execution of next generation
of
> software.
>
> In any case even regular PCI Express is great, get it.
>
> Roman
>
> -- --Original Message-- --
> From: Anthony Ware [mailto:anthony@(protected)]
> Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 12:08 AM
> To: truespace@(protected)
> Subject: Re: [TSML] PCI Express - Semantics
>
> Dave,
>
> PCI Express is one type of bus that connects the system and peripherals
> together, referring to the slot type on the motherboard and edge connector
> on the accesory card (along with what data and how it is carried along the
> bus). The GPU has little to do with it apart from whether it would make
> sense from a performance point of view to connect it via a PCI-Express
bus,
> or throttle it by connecting it to, say, an AGP bus.
>
> PCI-Express is not just for graphics cards, I've seen motherboards with 5
> PCI-Express connector slots on them but I think you have trouble if you
put
> 5 graphics cards in them!
>
> Anthony
>
> -- --Original Message-- --
> From: "Dave Angelini"<dpangelini@(protected)>
> Sent: 13/08/04 05:18:54
> To: "truespace@(protected)"<truespace@(protected)>
> Subject: Re: [TSML] PCI Express - Semantics
>
> So "supporting PCI-Express" means that at some time in the future you
> could
> replace the GPU on the graphics card (for which I am interpretting
> "slot" in
> you explanation below) with one that is designed for PCI-Express??
>
> If that is the case, then this is a bit duplicitous as most users
don't
> replace the GPU's on their graphic cards. I find this hard to
believe.
> Are
> you referring to something else?
>
> Nevertheless, performance wise, what are you NOT getting with a
> PCI-Express
> "supported" graphics card as opposed to a true PCI-Express graphics
> card.
> The "supported" cards all boost that they have 16 pixel pipelines
which
> I
> thought was at the core of PCI-e.
>
> Thanks,
> Dave Angelini
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