Is this true ?

[SSRJazz]

You're correct that PCI is faster, but it's more than 133 MB/Sec, that's the ATA 133 harddrive specification. A 32 bit PCI card on a 66 mhz bus is 264 MB/Sec. 32 bits times 66,000,000 (66 mhz) equals 2,112,000,000 bits devided by 8 equals 264,000,000 bytes or 264 MB/Sec. PCI is my friend, let's not short-change him.

I'm not referring to the ATA specs...

The ORIGINAL pci specs were for a 33 mhz buss.. hence the 133MB/sec.

There has been the introduction of 64 bit and 66mhz pci specifications, however you typically will find the 32bit, 133mhz pci slots on most consumer motherboards today. The 64bit and 66 mhz pci slots are mainly on server motherboards.

So...the only relevant number for the masses is the PCI buss running at 33mhz which would yield 133MB/s

And...if you don't believe that consumer boards are only using the 33mhz buss, take a look at the table on this interesting article from Feb. of this year on overclocking the pci buss:

http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/sh...tml?i=1968&p=4

All of those motherboards, at standard FSB speeds are running their pci buss at 33mhz.

[Sugarnutz]

The ORIGINAL pci specs were for a 33 mhz buss.. hence the 133MB/sec.

There has been the introduction of 64 bit and 66mhz pci specifications, however you typically will find the 32bit, 133mhz pci slots on most consumer motherboards today. The 64bit and 66 mhz pci slots are mainly on server motherboards.

So...the only relevant number for the masses is the PCI buss running at 33mhz which would yield 133MB/s

And...if you don't believe that consumer boards are only using the 33mhz buss, take a look at the table on this interesting article from Feb. of this year on overclocking the pci buss:

http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/sh...tml?i=1968&p=4

All of those motherboards, at standard FSB speeds are running their pci buss at 33mhz.

Agreed! I'm looking more at the specification than the current implementation. With the Intel E7505 chipset motherboards we’re seeing a lot more in the way of PCI-X slots becoming available and they all seem to have at least one 64bit/66mhz PCI slot. Although this is a more expensive option, some folks don’t seem to mind spending the money to get a higher performance system. Remember this thread is not so much about what’s available now, but what may be coming in a a higher priced/higher performance solution and the preference of a PCI based interface instead of FireWire.