PCI soundcard in PCI-X or PCI express slot

[zaphodiv]

I'm embarassingly out of date on PC hardware stuff.
I havn't needed to upgrade my computer for a long time.

Stupid question but I don't have time to read up on this right now.

Will a PCI soundcard work in a PCI-X or PCI express slot?
Anything to beware of?

I need a soundcard with balanced in/out rarther than
a standard card with ground+left+right
I can't find a suitable pci-x/express card.

[Skengeboy]

Well, you got almost no reason buying a PCI-X soundcard, just buy a good PCI, cuz i really don't think a pci would fit into the pci-e!

[Virtualbody1234]

No. A PCI card doesn't fit in a PCI-X or PCI Express slot.

What motherboard do you have? It probably has PCI slots.

[zaphodiv]

It's for a 1U rackmount server. The server has not been ordered yet but the man dealing with it says they are not available with PCI slots. I think he is just looking at DELL 1U servers.

[lynx]

Be warned, PCI-X is NOT the same as PCIe.

PCIe is PCI Express, up to 16 lanes running at 250 MB/s each, total number of lanes dependent on the chipset but each lane running independently. Maximum bandwidth 4GB/s on one device. The specification allows for 32 lanes, and enhancements are in progress which can double the speed of the lanes, allowing a theoretical 16GB/s per device. Each lane can be simultaneously bi-directional so in theory the bandwidth is doubled.

PCI-X is PCI eXtended (although I dub it PCI eXpensive), a 64 bit bus currently running at up to 133MHz giving 1033 MB/s. 266MHz and 533MHz buses are in the pipeline giving over 4GB/s throughput, but that is shared by all devices on the bus. A backward step IMO.

Pics of a couple of motherboards with all three slots here (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=xeon64mb&page=4&cookie%5Ftest=1), but they are mislabeled, the captions should read PCIe/PCI/PCI-X to be less confusing. In both cases the black slots are PCIe, the small white slots are PCI and the long slots are PCI-X. Note the position of the slot dividers.

If it is a 1U server it almost certainly has a PCI-X bus. It is unlikely that you will find a PCI-X sound card - on the basis that audio is not likely to be wanted on a server - and you can't fit a PCI card into a PCI-X slot.

If you really want audio you need to check the USB connectivity and if it is available get a USB sound device.

I'm not sure what you mean by balanced in-out though.

Edit: that will teach me to be a smartarse and comment before I've looked. Dell Poweredge 1U servers have PCIe expansion buses as well as PCI-X although it is optional on some servers. I think you should still consider the USB option though, since PCIe sound cards are only just coming to market. All the servers have 2 rear USB ports.

[CMS2123]

Well from my experience i know that the UAD card which is also a type of sound card works great in both pci and pci-x (not pci-e) slots...
now about some real sound cards i'm using RME sound card and POWERPULSAR now i dont know if they can connect to pci-x but maybe you can ask them.
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/index.htm
http://www.creamware.com/
Hope i was helpful

[lynx]

You are quite right, any PCI card which has a cutout in the right place for the PCI-X slot will operate quite happily. The card won't even know it is located in anything other than a standard PCI slot.

That means it has a cutout at each end of the interface, one for PCI, the other for PCI-X. For example, the latest Creative cards, the Terratec 7.1 (but not 5.1) cards and the Pinnacle M-Audio card all have such a setup.

However, at the same time the speed of the PCI-X bus will be down to 33MHz, and that's for all the PCI-X slots, which rather defeats the object of having a PCI-X bus in the first place. Crippling a high speed raid controller just to enable the occasional piece of audio isn't going to win any popularity prizes. That's why I called it a backwards step.

[telecom]

i have built in sound but one speaker side work
this is hardware or software
proplem?

[CMS2123]

can be bought...
what kind of motherboard you use?