Product specs and overclocking are two different things =P

Hanamichi wrote on 2023-08-14, 22:36:

Finally people showing some PCI @66Mhz ownage, nice work

I hope I can get some benches with a E7505 PCI-X 66-133Mhz soon

I also have the PCI-X to 4x PCIe adapter somewhere here.

I would love to have it!

Hanamichi wrote on 2023-08-14, 22:36:

I also have the PCI-X to 4x PCIe adapter somewhere here.

I know that PEX8114 can be used to connect PCIe x4 devices to a PCI-X slot in a similar fashion to PEX8111. However, I haven't found any real product besides a RDK that could achieve that purpose.

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-08-15, 07:42:

Hanamichi wrote on 2023-08-14, 22:36:

I also have the PCI-X to 4x PCIe adapter somewhere here.

I know that PEX8114 can be used to connect PCIe x4 devices to a PCI-X slot in a similar fashion to PEX8111. However, I haven't found any real product besides a RDK that could achieve that purpose.

I have this vague memory of user sdz making something along those lines with a mention of releasing schematic & pcb, though the exact post is lost to me.
He does have a reverse one, pciex4 to pci on his website. http://sdz-mods.com/
Would be great if he sold those.

Relative comparison to AGP (courtesy of Tom's Hardware):

weedeewee wrote on 2023-08-15, 08:02:

I have this vague memory of user sdz making something along those lines with a mention of releasing schematic & pcb, though the exact post is lost to me.
He does have a reverse one, pciex4 to pci on his website. http://sdz-mods.com/
Would be great if he sold those.

I didn't find it. The problem is that PCI-X is not as common as PCI and it's pretty much gone by the time PCIe becomes mainstream, so it will only be useful for dual Tualatin as well as 604 boards on which such slots are present and relevant.

PEX8114 is still used in some cases, such as PCIe x4 data acquisition cards, but certainly no known adapters existed to allow installing PCIe devices into PCI-X slots as far as I know. If such adapters existed, it will definitely be useful on those old server platforms as they would do a good enough job in enabling use of modern peripherals there.

Used to see them for sale all the time more than 10 years ago on ebay, a store dedicated to prototype style boards had boosted adverts wherever you searched 'pcie'...they were about £60 then..now £220 and long gone..of course I passed them up. Website here:
https://pridopia.co.uk/opencart/index.php?rou … 1&product_id=64

Fast-forward to 2019 I had a search kept for pci-x and snagged one for 10$ from Japan.

Of course they exist, mostly for using modern raid controllers on an old workstation/server boards. There's a thread somewhere online about a guy getting a x1800? working in is G4 tower

How about the real deal:

You want an (NVIDIA) AGP card with that? 😏
Just add an ATOP 🤓

(I wouldn't do this, you need a powered PCIe riser inbetween for the increased power draw of a GPU)

Apologies wrong link, edited post and correct link here:
https://pridopia.co.uk/opencart/index.php?rou … 7&product_id=64

Hanamichi wrote on 2023-08-17, 22:58:

How about the real deal: _20230817_234618.JPG […]
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How about the real deal:
_20230817_234618.JPG

_20230817_234702.JPG

_20230817_234401.JPG

_20230817_234559.JPG

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking about. Glad to see the real thing existed.

It's not just modern RAID controllers (HBAs). Provided the adapter being reliable enough one could put a NVMe drive and enjoy some good data speed on such old platforms.

While you can't directly boot from such drives, a Linux kernel booted from an accessible local disk could probably handle the rest.

You can boot with NVMEs and AHCI that have Option ROM.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-08-18, 03:15:

You can boot with NVMEs and AHCI that have Option ROM.

Oh we are talking nvme on adapters now? :p hehe.

Unfortunately I have come to ruin the dream 🙁 once upon a couple years ago I tried it.

If you want to try it grab yourself debian jessie and a boot drive for grub and plop an adapter in that adapter and plug in the nvme.

When I tried it, it did seem to work, but here is the problem. I think it was running in some kind of cursed POI mode. I was getting mere kbps. Shame. I think without native motherboard level pcie architecture/modern processors, it just won’t work in a worth while way.

The best way to do m.2 is sata m.2 on a sata card/m.2 to sata adapter. That actually might give you the best possible speeds on systems like we are talking btw. Short of a ram drive inside the system ram. (Not iRam, but that is also an option, though probably slower than sata m.2)

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-08-18, 03:27:

Oh we are talking nvme on adapters now? :p hehe. […]
Show full quote

Oh we are talking nvme on adapters now? :p hehe.

Unfortunately I have come to ruin the dream 🙁 once upon a couple years ago I tried it.

If you want to try it grab yourself debian jessie and a boot drive for grub and plop an adapter in that adapter and plug in the nvme.

When I tried it, it did seem to work, but here is the problem. I think it was running in some kind of cursed POI mode. I was getting mere kbps. Shame. I think without native motherboard level pcie architecture/modern processors, it just won’t work in a worth while way.

The best way to do m.2 is sata m.2 on a sata card/m.2 to sata adapter. That actually might give you the best possible speeds on systems like we are talking btw. Short of a ram drive inside the system ram. (Not iRam, but that is also an option, though probably slower than sata m.2)

In my own experience... I struggled to get a NVMe drive behind a PCI-to-PCIe adapter (PEX8112) working on a 865G motherboard -- on Linux it refused to respond to any command.

I wonder what might be missing for proper NVMe functionality behind such bridges. That similar combination worked on a G41 board. Not sure if the bridge itself was faulty somehow, but modern PCI video cards utilizing such bridge worked fine on the same 865 board.

PCI-X has much more bandwidth than PCI. You can run SATA drives at full SATA2 speed using some legacy PCI-X HBAs from LSI, though the option ROM has a huge footprint that will leave you with very little usable UMB if you intend to run DOS.

Supposedly, if the PCI-X chipset is well made, using NVMe drives behind PEX8114 may be possible. However, as no one has ever tried it yet, it's still uncertain.

In my tests with the pcie to nvme adapter it seemed the transfer speed was very dependent on cpu power which makes it a non starter for retro

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-08-18, 04:34:

In my tests with the pcie to nvme adapter it seemed the transfer speed was very dependent on cpu power which makes it a non starter for retro

PCI-X definitely isn't that slow for a pair of 1.4GHz Tualatins. On my P3TDL3, I was able to reach near full SATA2 speed (~300MB/s) with a SATA SSD connected to a PCI-X LSI HBA.

Maybe something is required for NVMe to run optimal, though CPU performance does matter for those buses. If the PCI-X has everything NVMe needs then it should theoretically reach however much speed the bus and the CPU could attain.

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-08-18, 09:02:

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-08-18, 04:34:

In my tests with the pcie to nvme adapter it seemed the transfer speed was very dependent on cpu power which makes it a non starter for retro

PCI-X definitely isn't that slow for a pair of 1.4GHz Tualatins. On my P3TDL3, I was able to reach near full SATA2 speed (~300MB/s) with a SATA SSD connected to a PCI-X LSI HBA.

Maybe something is required for NVMe to run optimal, though CPU performance does matter for those buses. If the PCI-X has everything NVMe needs then it should theoretically reach however much speed the bus and the CPU could attain.

No, I was just talking just about NVME for some reason NVME on PCI express lanes is very CPU speed dependent. It seems other storage technologies aren’t as dependent. (with dma and whatnot) Like I said when I tried it, it seems as if it was always running into some sort of cursed PIO mode.. I mean I even saw slow down on Core2 era hardware compared to modern stuff so Pentium III in K-6s never stood a chance to fully realize PCI express nvme storage at workable speeds it seems. It’s possible I didn’t have something set up correctly, but on the core era setup, I’m not sure what else it would’ve needed because that was on a native PCI express. It may just be that it requires so many CPU cycles to perform those operations that storage like that didn’t make much sense until CPUs were fast enough.

Interestingly enough, Quake 3 scales with "r_smp 1", even with bus limitations. I've got 155fps on GeForce 6800GS, but ATi drivers are so horrible that it actually degrades performance to 116 fps.

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-08-18, 12:48:

No, I was just talking just about NVME for some reason NVME on PCI express lanes is very CPU speed dependent. It seems other storage technologies aren’t as dependent. (with dma and whatnot) Like I said when I tried it, it seems as if it was always running into some sort of cursed PIO mode.. I mean I even saw slow down on Core2 era hardware compared to modern stuff so Pentium III in K-6s never stood a chance to fully realize PCI express nvme storage at workable speeds it seems. It’s possible I didn’t have something set up correctly, but on the core era setup, I’m not sure what else it would’ve needed because that was on a native PCI express. It may just be that it requires so many CPU cycles to perform those operations that storage like that didn’t make much sense until CPUs were fast enough.

Did you install your NVMe drive directly on the PCIe bus? I know that some P43/P45 boards have spare slots that can be used for a x4 device so that could be a good reference.

For the NVMe drive on my G41 board installed via PCIe-to-PCI bridge I get something like 80-100MB/s on average while copying, which is expected for the PCI bus (normally up to ~133MB/s).

On another P45 board of mine (connected directly to a spare x4 slot) it's running a bit faster than on PCI, though I haven't actually measured how high it could reach.

I put it right into a pcie slot if I recall on the core2 setup