First post, by Great Hierophant
- Rank
- l33t
My short answer to the topic question is three at most, one at least. Today's highly integrated motherboards pack in a lot of features. Gigabit ethernet, USB2 and often Firewire controllers are standard on most motherboards. No need for PCI cards for those features anymore. Recent video cards have sufficient power for mpeg2 decoding that standalone DVD decoders are not necessary anymore. SCSI controllers can be found on the motherboard too, generally 0,1,0+1, 5 and JBOD. Any extra performance received by consumer-priced SCSI 32-bit PCI controllers isn't worth the cost of upgrading. Video tuner and capture cards may a niche if you can't find an All-In-Wonder AGP card that can do the same thing. Modems? Well, if you live in caveman country I guess I could see the need for a PCI modem.
The only truly compelling use for a PCI slot these days is to insert a sound card, and only if you need high fidelity recording/playback capabilities or 3D EAX positional audio (sound blasters.) Otherwise you can rely on the integrated audio codec for the basics. PCI slots, like IDE ports still have enough uses that they will be around for a while longer. (DVD drives and burners have been slow to adopt SATA.) Serial ports are in danger of becoming extinct on new motherboards, parallel ports will follow them and even PS/2 ports may not be safe. (USB to PS/2 adapters will fill any perceived need for compatibility.) Its also getting tough to justify the floppy drive connector when a USB cable is much slimmer. (The OS CD will do any required booting in the future.)
Actually, the AGP port may become extinct before the PCI slot. The AGP port is limited to one port while PCI-express can divy lanes to slots as needed. SLI could not feasibly occur with AGP but it can with PCI-E. It won't go as fast as the VLB bus slot, tied to the 486 bus, but its days are being numbered.
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