10-year-old PCI in "cutting-edge" HP Pavilions??

I have an HP Pavilion a1640n with an Asus P5BW-LA motherboard...aside
from one Express x16 slot, it has three other PCI slots. These (other
slots) are showing up in diagnostics as 32-bit...It's almost 2007...why
is it that most PCI slots in the "latest-and-greatest" consumer PCs
still use the decade-old 33-MHz x 32-bit PCI standard???? Any insights
are appreciated.
Brooke Crothers (http://www.x86watch.com/)

Brooke Crothers wrote:
I have an HP Pavilion a1640n with an Asus P5BW-LA motherboard...aside
from one Express x16 slot, it has three other PCI slots. These (other
slots) are showing up in diagnostics as 32-bit...It's almost 2007...why
is it that most PCI slots in the "latest-and-greatest" consumer PCs
still use the decade-old 33-MHz x 32-bit PCI standard???? Any insights
are appreciated.
Brooke Crothers (http://www.x86watch.com/)


When the majority of the available (cheap) add-in cards use
33MHz x 32 bit PCI, it makes sense for the slots to be like
that too.

Remember, that motherboard manufacturers add little of value to
the design. The design characteristics are dictated by the chipsets
used. And the majority of desktop chipsets have a 32 bit bus
for their PCI interface.

Yes, it is possible, for at least some architectures, to add
enhanced capabilities. For example, Hypertransport on the
AMD Athlon64 platforms, allows forming arbitrary chains of
chips, so that functions can be added. There are some nice
"PCI tunnels", that allow adding addition PCI busses to
a computer. But the "science" of marketing dictates
that such designs not be released for desktop products -
if you want such things, they expect you to pay $500 for
a server board.

This is an example of a PCI tunnel, usable on Hypertransport
architecture systems. You stuff one of these, between the
Northbridge and Southbridge, for example, or between the
processor and the Northbridge.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/...5E4745,00.html

If you want an example of an exception to the rule, find
a board with 6300ESB Southbridge. This board is $215, so
not exactly a bargain offering. (And it is out of
production now.)

http://www.dfi.com.tw/Upload/Product...855GME-MGF.jpg

Expansion Slots (made possible by 6300ESB Southbridge)
(1) AGP 4x slot
(1) PCI-X slot
(2) PCI slots

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets...00esb_diag.gif

Otherwise, you'd want a server or a workstation motherboard.
These are examples of workstation boards, with multiple
bus standards. The prices here, are above desktop levels,
but perhaps a bit below server levels.

P5WDG2 WS Professional $340 (LGA775)
http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.asp...l2=82&l 3=249

M2N32 WS Professional $290 (Socket AM2)
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?m...l2=82&l 3=313

Paul

Paul wrote:
Remember, that motherboard manufacturers add little of value to
the design. The design characteristics are dictated by the chipsets
used. And the majority of desktop chipsets have a 32 bit bus
for their PCI interface.

Paul, thank you for the informative and very thorough response. You
actually hit the nail on the head when you suggested server MBs. I was
trying to make this a server (of sorts). What actually prompted my
posting was an attempt to plug in a gigabit Ethernet adapter into one
of the non-x16 PCI slots. I presumed they were PCI 2.2 or better.
Not.

Your points are well taken about motherboard manufacturers adding
little value. Still, it is very surprising to me that most of the
slots in Core 2 Duo desktops use the original PCI spec. I suppose I
should have know better but it is a bit vexing when you read the ad
copy that screams about new PCI Express x16 technology (one slot) then
-- as you said -- is silent about the rest of the slots. Of course you
get what you pay for: these HP systems do come w/ a large 3gbps SATA
drive and 2GB of fast memory - and they are very cheap. Alas, I will
probably go with a low-end Proliant server. They are not expensive and
come with two PCI-X and two PCI Express slots.
--Brooke Crothers