mobo related questions posted by nis...

mobo related questions

Posted on Nov 27, 2005 01:38 pm
nisthana
Member Since: Nov 24, 2005

1. What is SLI ? What is advantage of having an SLI enabled board ?
2. What is difference between PCI-e x1, x4 and x16?
3. If a board doesnt have a firewire, would I need one in future ? Wont USB be sufficient ?
4. How much expandibility should I look for in a board ? ASUS A8N-E has just 3 PCI slots, no FW but has two PCI-e x16 and one PCI-e x1 and x4. Can these PCI-e slots be used like PCI ?

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Noize2u
Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002

Nov 27, 2005 06:45 pm

SLI (Scalable Link Interface) is for graphic's so far. It enable's the use of dual video card's and link's their GPU together for higher performance.

Here is a link to the nVidia overview page on it. You can link to the otehr page's such as the FAQ section on it and such. So far it look's as though they and MSI are the top rated among the sytem builder's using it.

www.slizone.com/page/slizone_learn.html

jmail
jimmie neutron
Member
Since: Feb 14, 2005

Nov 28, 2005 05:37 am

SLI is not a technology to use on a DAW at this time. PCI-e x1 is a single bandwidth slot, x4 is a slot with 4x the bandwidth and x16 is a video card slot. The 2 x16 slots eat up almost all the "allowed" PCI-e bandwidth. The PCI architecture allowed for bandwidth for 5 slots, all the same "width". PCI-e hasn't really changed the old paradigm for total bandwidth, they've just re-arranged it to benefit video. As far as I'm concerned, you need more than one expansion slot, especially if you don't have firewire. The manufacturers are relying on you using the onboard NIC, onboard audio, onboard vegie-matic (hey - it won't be long!!!)...