VOGONS

PCI-X and PCI slots, 3.3v and 5v

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First post, by ratfink

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I'm pondering the purchase of an old workstation. The motherboard has pci and pci-x slots [not pci-e].

The manual says:

The 32-bit PCI slot 1 supports 5.0 V signaling PCI adapters; it does not support 3.3 V signaling adapters or 64-bit adapters.

The 64-bit PCI-X slots 2 through 5 support 3.3 V signaling PCI or PCI-X adapters; they do not support 5.0 V signaling adapters

Looking at the pci keying here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PCI_Keying.png

and then eyeballing ebay shows that voodoo1's and 2's, sb live's [ct4760] and turtle beach santa cruz's are 5v, while aureal vortex's and voodoo banshees are universal. g200's in both 5v and universal exist.

I suppose this means at least I can use universal-keyed 32-bit pci cards in the 64bit slots.

edit - I'm not expecting to use voodoos or a g200 in it, but probably a sound card and a video capture card.

Reply 1 of 2, by BigBodZod

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The PCI-X slots were designed mostly for interface cards such as SCSI and Multi-Port Server NIC's.

Adaptec and Intel were the main manufacturers I noted for these types of 64-bit cards 😉

No matter where you go, there you are...

Reply 2 of 2, by sklawz

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hi

yes you can use a universal pci card in the pci-x slot.

i have an audigy2 zs on a broadcom serverworks board.

you may also notice that there are variants of the SBLIVE!
which are also universal. those devices all appear to
be of the SB0XXX branding rather than the older CTXXXX.

it is true that PCI-X was specifically for server based
solutions such as SCSI and ethernet with my own
experience in the past on SUN servers rather then
intel.

cya

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