[lug] PCI-X question

[D. Stimits]

Gary Hodges wrote:

> In the next couple/three months I'm planning on buying a new work 
> computer.  I had all the components pretty much figured out until 
> yesterday when I realized the SCSI controller I was getting is PCI-X 
> and the MBs I am looking at don't have that slot.  As an aside, PCI-X 
> slots seem to be extremely rare in single CPU MBs, and none exist for 
> AMD AM2 MBs best I can tell.  How much of a performance hit will I 
> take running the card in a regular PCI slot?  I'm wondering if I 
> should just go with SATA drives since I can't make full use of the 
> card's speed.
>

I would bet you can find several opteron boards that have this slot. 
Some of those are probably single opteron, but capable of using dual 
core (I believe socket 939).

Not sure what the state of SATA is right now, but I'd bet that for 
single drives they have some good ones. If you wanted cutting edge 
though, you'd need 15k rpm U320...especially if you plan to run more 
than at once. Looks like *some* of the SATA drives now support the 
native command queueing in the way that all SCSI do.

D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net