I’ve never come across anything newer/better than the Matrox Parhelia. Still not a great gaming card though, but will be fine for Win9x and early XP gaming.

If you aren’t bothered about staying period correct or native PCI-X then the Startech adapter that allows the use of PCIe cards (16x slot length, 4x electrically) gives you a wider range of options.

Does Parhelia have Windows 9x drivers?

No. Unfortunately 2k is as early as you can go with the PCI-X Parhelia.

The most powerful PCI-X card is a PCIe GPU with an adapter.

paradigital wrote on 2024-07-27, 06:11:

I’ve never come across anything newer/better than the Matrox Parhelia. Still not a great gaming card though, but will be fine for Win9x and early XP gaming.

If you aren’t bothered about staying period correct or native PCI-X then the Startech adapter that allows the use of PCIe cards (16x slot length, 4x electrically) gives you a wider range of options.

Have you seen any of these adapters out in the wild? I can't find any for sale and I have three servers (4x PPro, 2x PII Xeon, 2x PIII) that I would like to test one of these adapters with.

Funny timing on the thread bump. I was just researching this subject recently.

It seems the PCI-X to PCI-E adapters are extremely rare these days, so that doesn't actually seem to be an option anymore unless you happen to stumble across one.

So, I wonder... has anyone ever tested whether the fastest known PCI-X GPU, the Parhelia, performs better in a PCI-X slot than a more modern PCI card in the same slot? Are there any modern-ish PCI cards that are capable of 66Mhz PCI operation?

Over the past year I have managed to find some interesting late PCI cards, such as a 9400GT (with 128bit memory interface) and even a Radeon HD 5450. The Radeon should be lightyears beyond the Parhelia in raw performance and driver stability... but PCI bottlenecks can completely destroy frame rate consistency, so its hard to say which would be better.

I will have to dig through my collection to see if I still have any PCI-X boards so I can do some testing eventually. I had a big huge Gateway server system about 12 years ago that had PCI-X... but I can't for the life of me remember what model it was. I just know it was a ridiculously heavy black tower with SCSI hot swap bays on the front, no AGP slot and I believe it had support for dual socket 603 Xeons. I don't think I kept the motherboard. It was so long ago though. 😌

Old PC Hunter wrote on 2025-02-11, 00:50:

Have you seen any of these adapters out in the wild? I can't find any for sale and I have three servers (4x PPro, 2x PII Xeon, 2x PIII) that I would like to test one of these adapters with.

get in line buddy... I want some too.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-02-11, 01:13:

It seems the PCI-X to PCI-E adapters are extremely rare these days, so that doesn't actually seem to be an option anymore unless you happen to stumble across one.

Regular PCI-to-PCIe also works just fine though. Still drastically better than any PCI offerings like 9400GT and works with 66MHz and potentially 100MHz.

if someone is feeling their oats, the bridge chips are still obtainable for a not-terrible cost: https://www.ebay.com/itm/125972555642

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-02-11, 02:19:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-02-11, 01:13:

It seems the PCI-X to PCI-E adapters are extremely rare these days, so that doesn't actually seem to be an option anymore unless you happen to stumble across one.

Regular PCI-to-PCIe also works just fine though. Still drastically better than any PCI offerings like 9400GT and works with 66MHz and potentially 100MHz.

Has anyone showed the results of using a PCI-E card on an adapter in a PCI slot? I'd like to see a comparison of these cards: HD 5450 PCI, Parhelia PCI-X, later PCI-E card + PCI adapter. And test each on 33Mhz and 66Mhz (if the board allows it). This would answer a lot of questions.

Also, just to be clear, without some funky cobbled up setup, a low profile card would have to be used so that the adapter + card still fit in a standard PCI slot location.

I found this thread but it doesn't actually provide any gaming results in the end once the issues were worked out:
GTS 450 + Dual Tualatin.

i have some stuff coming from china (eventually). but i dont expect any performance issues

A useless short analysis on PCIX to PCIe bridge performance on Tualatin

I do now for sure that a HD5450 PCI runs fine on 66 MHz.

i did the test of HD3850 PCIe on PCI-33, PCI-66 via PCI-X and their AGP counterpair on Intel Xeon board.

here is 3DMark 03 triple screen:

https://youtu.be/X0DlVTv5RQQ?si=jAC8LSilHYl7Ye5G&t=440