magma box again:)

[the19thbear]

Hi.
I didnt want to hijack the other thread with my questions so here is a new one.

Is there anything else than magma (cheaper) that will work with a pcie port?
I want to get rid of the pci overflow messages that i get when using my 3x 6dsp cards. Could this be solved by using the pcie port?
(such as this one http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/pci-expres ... n-box.html)

The speed of the pci card is 133mb, speed of pciex1 254.3mb.
does that mean that i can only run 2x dsp cards (133x2=266) on a pciex1 port?(254.3mb)

the box in the link only uses pciex1, but my motherboard has pciex16. Thats plenty of bandwith for the 3 cards, but is there any cheap alternative for a 3xpci to pciex16 (or less) converter?


and what about this??
http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/full-packa ... -case.html

They can run 4 uad cards together, but how? with the pciex1 speed limit??
-i have read about the single pcie to pci converter virtuavia.eu has, on gearslutz. It works perfectly with uad cards, so if the 4 cards version works, it would be a magma killer!!

any thoughts?

I



Thanks alot!

[capacitor]

Am interested in this as well. I currently have a 2nd hand magma (actually, two - a 2u unit and a 4u unit) and am using a Cardbus adapter to a laptop, meaning just extending the existing PCI bus. The Magma PCI-E 68pin adapters are $300US but their system is rock solid. I'm getting 7 Masterverbs out of a highly shared IRQ & 21 DSPs/2 cards, before hitting the PCI overflow, btw.

I'm no expert, but I think this stuff is accurate (from http://www.naplestech.com/shopcart/bus_speeds.asp:

The PCI 133mhz transfer is for the whole bus, and is shared amongst the cards. In other words, the max you'll get is 133mhz, regardless of how many/what type of cards that are on the bus. That's also unidirectional, so the 133mhz max transfer rate would be split between going into the cards & out of the cards.

I believe that the 133mhz top speed is theoretical, practically speaking. I remember reading that somewhere anyhow.

PCI-E x1 is 200mhz & bidirectional, so can go 200mhz in one direction, while doing 200mhz in the other direction. So no bottleneck at that stage, all else being equal.

HTH,
cap

[astroman]

imho you're both wrong with your calculation base.
A Scope system communicates with only 1 card, regardless how may are S/TDM bus chained...

cheers, Tom

[capacitor]

Of course. In the generic sense (i.e. UAD-1) the PCI bus is shared.

I should also clarify that's 133mbs NOT mhz

For some $USD numbers, I picked up a 2 slot Magma with high bandwidth (silver ends) cable & Cardbus card for around $350 used. The corresponding PCI-E adapter, either EC34, EC54 or for a motherboard pci-e slot, is $300 new from Magma.

If going the Magma PCI to PCI-E route, your Magma box needs to run a Pericom chipset. PM me for details.

[kylie]

hi bear,

I still have that 4 slot pciex1 to pci board lying around, cause I had no time to rip my scope cards from my magma box at put it onto that board. well I have no psu for it, not to forget a case, as well.
since the magma I have is a 13 slot dec chip unit I can't even try it with a pcie card, apart from the fact that the card costs more than the whole set of 4slot board, cable and pcie card (they sell under the exsys brand over here).
I'd like to say something like "I'll keep you posted" but I don't want to promise anything...

-greetings, markus-