Expansion Cards Part 1: (of a 3 part series)

PCI expansion slots available on motherboards to enable a number of improvements in a computer system, but the card has targeted a slot must be addressed before making a purchasing decision. The most common types of expansion cards for modern computer systems can be divided into three formats: PCI, AGP and PCI Express. Each of these formats will be treated separately in this series of three councils PCI. Letter to the PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect, and is the term used to describe a bus directly to the components of the system memory and processor system bus via the front. During consideration of communications on a motherboard, the concept of bus has nothing to do with the big yellow thing that takes children to school. This May, several buses of a computer, and the PCI bus, everyone is responsible for managing the flow of communications on different devices for the processor. Front side bus is a high-speed connection that controls communication processor with items such as hard drives, memory and PCI devices, and no payment processor with all the responsibility of management. First developed by Intel in early 1990, PCI has been established even before (and under), bus architectures such as ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) and VL-Bus (VESA Local), which was common in the 1980s and 1990. The original specifications for the PCI bus has a speed of 33 MHz with a 32-bit bus width, and a maximum bandwidth of 132 megabytes per second. There are a number of revisions to the PCI standard has significantly increased these specifications, taking to 66 MHz, 64-bit and 512 MB per second respectively. 32-bit and 64-bit versions have different physical properties, and most motherboards only offer 32-bit connections. The original specification of power PCI devices that operate at 5 V DC and revisions with the wine of opportunity for entities to continue to use 5 V, and to be able to operate at 3.3V DC. A simple explanation of 32-bit and 64 bit can be taken to the analogy of buses and traffic. Think of all the bit like a traffic lane on the road. Think of a 32-bit bus 32 channels for traffic and a 64-bit bus with 64 lanes for traffic. As a greater number of vehicles that can travel at the same time, on a road several channels, more data can be transferred to a bus with a little more consideration. Motherboard can support more slots to share a PCI bus, and although not particularly common, can contain more than one PCI bus. According to the form factor size motherboard, and other characteristics that take place in May on the shelf, you can expect to have six standard PCI slots in a motherboard. For example, the mATX format provides that two of the 32-bit PCI, while the ATX-six format features 32-bit PCI. A 32-bit PCI card features 124 pins mating with a slot in a system motherboard, and is a 32-bit or 64-bit slots (although the data transfer should be 32 bits in one or another type of slot). A 64-bit PCI card features 184-pin mating with a slot on the motherboard, but can usually fit into a 32-bit slot as well, as long as the functions of the motherboard does not preclude . When installed on a 32-bit slot, data transfer 64-bit card is limited to 32 bits. The STL2 Dual Socket 370 Intel Server Board W / VRM STL2 Dual Socket 370 Intel Server Board is a good reference for comparing the 32-bit and 64-bit PCI. Search the lower left corner of the map shows four 32-bit PCI slots and two 64-bit PCI. Further contributions in this series of tips will be AGP and PCI Express, each with its own physical properties. Although the format of different PCI cards can be interchangeable, PCI, AGP and PCI Express cards that do not work (or necessary) in the second slot. Most cards will be PCI 32-bit variety and range of articles that are available is quite broad. Graphics cards, sound cards, network adapters, RAID controllers, TV tuners, modems and USB / Firewire controllers are all common themes that can be added to a system using a PCI card. Many of the items listed in paragraph above, is incorporated into the modern motherboard, but a board These devices do not allow means of upgrading. PCI devices provide Plug and Play, allowing the user to install (or remove) a device at home. For example, a low-cost 2-channel sound card, can be quite good for some at first but along the way that you can decide that something like 7.1-channel Sound Blaster Audigy 2 offers sound quality that they really want . The upgrade is a question of whether to turn off the system, trading cards, restart, and install new software and drivers (OK, maybe a little more simplified). The good thing about PCI is that even if you have a table with in-feature (for example, included in above), the BIOS on the motherboard as a rule, you can disable function if you do not want to add to a map update (which the Audigy sound card mentioned in the example above), or that it can complement the function and built (as a RAID card FDI). A site that led the development of the PGA is the result of PCI-based graphics card. The demands for speed games and other graphics-intensive applications that require high bandwidth, but it was not available on the PCI bus. Since all devices on the PCI bus share bandwidth available, an even faster, dedicated bus is required to treat only the charts. PCI graphics card is still available, however, and an easy way to add a second monitor to a system currently operates in an AGP or PCI Express graphics. The last word PCI slot has been around for a while, and seems to have a place at least in the near future of computer architecture. AGP and PCI Express offers performance advantages that the standard PCI can not match, but for many applications, the performance offered by PCI is more than enough. Watch the next few tips in this series for the basics of the PGA. http://www.geeks.com http://www.geeks.com/pix/techtips.htm computer advice and help the team http://www.geeks.com/pix/techtips.htm