motherboard questions

[nonsqtr]

I'm looking for a motherboard to run an HD-3. Ideally it would have lots of CPU power left over for RTAS plug-ins. It needs three PCI slots of the same kind, so if I get a PCI-x it has to have three PCI-x slos operating at 133 MHz, yes? Or, if I get a PCI-e Pro Tools system, then the motherboard has to have 3 PCI-e slots of the same kind, like, three 8x slots let's say. Am I correct so far or is there some slop in the "uniformity" requirement?

Then - scanning the availabe motherboards from various companies, it appears that getting ANY motherboad with three idential backplane connectors is very difficult these days! I found one from SuperMicro that has 6 PCI-x slots, three of which are 133 MHz. That's all, just the one, and the backplanes from most manufacturers look like a mish-mosh of "one of each" in terms of connectors and card types.

First question is, what kinds of motherboards are you using for HD-3's? And second question is, are there any other possibilities? Like, is there some kind of expansion bridge that turns a single PCI-e connection into an 8x PCI-x expansion chassis, or some such thing? I want dual CPU's if I can get them (as many cores as possible), and plenty of RAM - so what are the hot motherboards these days? (ps Fry's doesn't even stock anything with two sockets anymore.... sigh...)

[MikeX]

You can use standard length PCI slots for your full length cards.

PCI-e compatibility is for x4 slots I believe... which means you can use a x4, x8, or x16 slot and mix them for the three cards.

[Hotcrazyfruit]

Any motherboard with any size of slot (1x, 4x, 8x, 16x) will work with the cards, as the cards only use 1x. Every single type of PCIe slot can run electrically at lower speeds. Thats the beauty of PCIe.

Nick

[Fullsound Recording]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121410

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121407

and If i were building a new box today i would most likley get into this one
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...%20Family&sw=5

http://www.evga.com/articles/00537/

[nonsqtr]

Originally Posted by MikeX

You can use standard length PCI slots for your full length cards.

Hi - thanks for this tidbit. But what are the extra pins for? And don't most of the connectors have fat edges so they (deliberately) won't fit into the slot thingie?

[nonsqtr]

Originally Posted by Fullsound Recording

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121410

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121407

and If i were building a new box today i would most likley get into this one
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...%20Family&sw=5

http://www.evga.com/articles/00537/

Thanks for these tips, Fullsound. That EVGA piece looks real nice... drool...

Cost on that, for a single processor, is about 3500, and for two processors maybe 5 grand and change. (5680's with a minimal configuraion, only three of the DDR slots populated on each side, firewire card, dual monitor video, and a couple of nice big drives). Oh and a nice big power supply.

Plus you could multi-boot it and have a "safe mode" ProTools that you can always access and an "experimental" ProTools booting on the same machine with access to the same projects. Hm, this has possibilities.

And blazingly fast CPU's make it a natural for M-Powered too, so why not add an extra partition for that too? Ha ha - if you're smart you'll never have to unplug iLoks. Ha ha. :)

[sean shannon]

I use the Intel H55HC motherboard with 3 adjacent PCI slots. You will need to add a firewire card, and you'll need a video card for use with Windows 7. Runs Pro Tools great, $99.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...7BBTkwCjCECjCE

[Fullsound Recording]

I have a pal that does Video editing and he built three weeks ago a monster box out of that EVGA board and for test I took my PCIe cards and interface over to his place and installed PT and it was fine. Loaded every gosh darn RTAS we could and tried to bring the box to its knees and could not.

[MikeX]

Originally Posted by nonsqtr

Hi - thanks for this tidbit. But what are the extra pins for? And don't most of the connectors have fat edges so they (deliberately) won't fit into the slot thingie?

Sorry for the late reply.

Nope.. the extra pins are for more bandwidth. Check the following from Wikipedia on PCI vs PCI-X:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

The theoretical maximum amount of data exchanged between the processor and peripherals with PCI-X is 1.06 GB/s, compared to 133 MB/s with standard PCI. PCI-X also improves the fault tolerance of PCI allowing, for example, faulty cards to be reinitialized or taken offline.

Digi has said that there is no real gain from running PCI-X vs PCI.. I run HD3 in PCI.. and don't really notice any slowdowns from the PCI-X machine I used to work on.