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More on BTX Motherboards

Posted by michael on from the running-hot dept.

venger writes "Anandtech has an article on the new standard of cases and motherboards that is soon to be released. Looks like they are trying to cater for the increase in heat devices are now producing while keeping the noise levels down!" We mentioned BTX earlier.

47 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. you use cases? by Brahmastra · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just have the board lying on the table and a bunch of wires going all over the place. Have a pedestal fan blowing right on it for cooling. That is the sign of true geekiness.

    1. Re:you use cases? by Jason1729 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I did that for a while, the problem is the footprint is way too big. I'm working on a "case" out of plexiglass that has all the components mounted to the outside so its very easy to get at to upgrade anything.

      Jason
      ProfQuotes

    2. Re:you use cases? by mikelu · · Score: 2, Funny

      Amen. One of my friends in highschool used to have his computer strung up in pieces on high tension cables attached near the ceiling of his room.

    3. Re:you use cases? by aliens · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Hehhe, I have two slabs of wood seperated by four dales, dawls, er (wood columns)

      Works well, a lil noisey, but easy to test stuff on!

      --
      -- taking over the world, we are.
    4. Re:you use cases? by sweetooth · · Score: 2

      dowels

    5. Re:you use cases? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just have the board lying on the table and a bunch of wires going all over the place.

      You use boards? Weak.

      I solder the chips together, directly. Barefoot. Everyday. 30 Miles. In the snow. With a knife in my thigh. And I like it.

    6. Re:you use cases? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Damn, I would've killed for a knife during my barefoot-through-snow-30-miles-uphill-both-ways years. Lucky bastard. Kids today don't know what it's like to suffer!

  2. the real question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    will these new motherboards be compatible with MOBIG-2 cases? I know a lot of sun servers use these cases.

  3. Since dust can be a problem by zymano · · Score: 5, Interesting

    why not a air filtration system ?

    1. Re:Since dust can be a problem by kidlinux · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can already buy cases with air filters. Most, if not all, Lian-Li cases come with filters over the intakes. The only thing they really do is reduce the airflow and cooling potential of your intake fans.

      You have to periodically clean your filters anyway, so you might as well just dust your system with compressed air every now and then. Then you don't have to worry about reduced airflow.

      The thing I've noticed about the filter on my case is that it picks up large particles, but the small stuff still gets through (it's like a soot, and builds up pretty good.) I've already replaced the stock filter material with something thicker. If I were to try and filter the soot, I don't think any air would get through. I'm not even sure why I still use a filter.

      --
      -kidlinux.
    2. Re:Since dust can be a problem by evilviper · · Score: 2, Interesting
      why not a air filtration system ?

      I would be willing to bet that the #1 reason, is that it seriously impeeds airflow.

      I have a couple 80mm filters covering my intake fans, which limits air intake, unfortunately. So, just to prevent some ammount of junk entering your system, you have to have fans that are significantly more powerful, meaning more noise.

      Besides that, I'm sure the material I used will not do a great job filtering out all dust, so an even more restrictive filter would be needed. Not to mention that a filter needs to be cleaned regularly.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  4. Nice but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Will these cases/board/supplies work with 64 bit CPUs or are those another ball of wax? Apple's got their 64 bit desktop machines for sale already, any i386 ones I've seen are rack mounted or sold as "big ass servers" meaning "you canna build yer own cheap, laddy"

  5. it's great, improved layout.. three models to pick by peculiarmethod · · Score: 4, Funny

    but..

    'graphics will use a x16 PCI Express implementation that offers 8GB/s of bandwidth. '

    will it be able to handle doom 3?

    pm

    --
    ** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
  6. Big Water by geoffspear · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ooh, they're going to start making the cases out of water? That's even better than making them out of cheese graters.

    --
    Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
  7. I see a pattern developing !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am going to be proactive in registering "CTX.com" through "ZTX.com"

    Nothing to do now but sit back and wait for the checks to arrive

    1. Re:I see a pattern developing !! by bhtooefr · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ATX.com - ATX Communications (no relation to Intel's ATX)
      BTX.com - BTX Technologies (A/V equipment)
      CTX.com - CTX Corporation (down, but I think they're a monitor company)
      DTX.com - DTx (an embedded computer manufacturer)
      ETX.com - ETX (down)
      FTX.com - Drug portal
      GTX.com - GTX Corporation (CAD software)
      HTX.com - Marksmen (down)
      ITX.com - ITX Design (web design/hosting)
      JTX.com - Farrier Marine (boat manufacturer - second server for downloads)

      There's the first ten from A, so you'll need to be quick if you want one...

  8. why? by obsid1an · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think the adoption of BTX is going to come very slowly. For the 90% of computer users out there, a 3Ghz P4 is already a huge overkill to browse the net and check email. What are these BTX computers going to run that will make them appeal to current users.

    Gamers, like usual, will be the biggest target for BTX. They are the only ones that will need the higher bandwidth bus for gfx and the faster cpus.

    1. Re:why? by elmegil · · Score: 2, Interesting
      No no no no. The industry is struggling to figure out how to make money, so the idea is to make a new form factor that requires, in order to upgrade, the purchase of
      1. a new motherboard
      2. probably a new CPU
      3. a new case, and
      4. a new graphics card
      all in one shot. No more of this reusing everything but the component you want to upgrade stuff!
      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    2. Re:why? by sweetooth · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This has less to do with processor speed and computing capabilities than it does with size and noise. There are a great many people buying smaller cases like the shuttle xpc because computers do everything they want and footprint, noise, and style are the things lacking now.

      Gamers won't care much about BTX unless there is a killer video card that will only be released in PCI Express form factor. At least initially.

    3. Re:why? by daves · · Score: 2, Funny

      What are they going to run? They'll run small.

      --
      People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
  9. Maybe someone knows by Apreche · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The big change that I see with this new BTX spec is video cards will be PCI Express and not AGP. I think I can safely assume that PCI Express has a bandwith that is much faster than that of AGP can ever have, which is why it would be desireable. But isn't the point of AGP that it allows you to set an arperture and use some of the system RAM as an extension of the memory on the graphics card? So unless every PCI Express Video card has like 256MB plus video ram on it, wont AGP still be better? I really know nothing about this PCI Express thing except that expansion cards go in it, and it's fast.

    --
    The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
    1. Re:Maybe someone knows by sweetooth · · Score: 2, Informative

      Good god, is it really that hard to search for pci express at google.com?

      From an Intel developer network page.

      Desktop Platforms with PCI Express Architecture will be designed to deliver highest performance in video, graphics, multimedia and other sophisticated applications. PCI Express architecture provides a high performance graphics infrastructure for Desktop Platforms doubling the capability of existing AGP8x designs with transfer rates of 4.0 Gigabytes per second over a x16 PCI Express lane for graphics controllers.

      There is even a link to a PDF detailing why PCI Express will be the next choice for graphics.

    2. Re:Maybe someone knows by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think I can safely assume that PCI Express has a bandwith that is much faster than that of AGP can ever have

      The AGP 8x spec has a max bandwidth of 2.1GB/s, while PCI Express x16 has a bandwidth of 8 GB/s. It might be theoretically possible to create a AGP 32x spec (although I doubt it), but the obvious question would be why?

      . But isn't the point of AGP that it allows you to set an arperture and use some of the system RAM as an extension of the memory on the graphics card?

      No, the point of AGP was to give a single slot increased bandwidth that's needed for modern graphics cards. PCI just isn't fast enough. Intel wrote into the spec that you could get away with sharing main memory as video memory in order to reduce system costs, but in practice nobody does this except for the absolute bottom tier PCs. The performance hit is huge.

      wont AGP still be better?

      No. Although it's questionable that PCI-X will really provide any speed increases. AGP 8x has a negligible speed improvement over AGP 2x, and quadrupling the bandwidth again isn't likely to do much either. I'm pretty sure PCI-X can still do the main memory-as-video memory trick, but there's really no need or desire to do so. If your card doesn't have enough memory to hold the textures then you're going to have a massive speed hit when you need to get them from memory. In practice this speed hit is so severe that the amount of bandwidth has relatively little impact on things -- it's the latency that kills.

    3. Re:Maybe someone knows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      pci-x != pci express

      pci-x has been around a while

    4. Re:Maybe someone knows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      One of the bigger benefits of ditching AGP is that AGP does not allow reads from video memory (at any worthwile speed anyway). PCI-Express will allow that. This would be great for render farms because you could render on your or specialized boards. I am sure there are other applications I cant think of atm.

    5. Re:Maybe someone knows by Malor · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, AGP was really developed to solve a problem that went away on its own; 2-D graphics.

      The big bottleneck on PC graphics for years and years was the bus speed. When you are doing 2-D graphics, in essence you have to copy your graphic data out, frame by frame, to the display memory. The system bus was always the bottleneck here. To animate a 320x200 screen at 30 frames per second, you have to push out about 2 megabytes per second. 640x480 is four times that; 1024x768 takes about 24 megs per second. These are all in 1-byte pixels, or 256 colors; to do this in 32-bit color you'd have to push 4 times as much again, or about 95 megabytes/second for that 1024x768 screen. The numbers go up really, really fast as you get to higher resolutions.

      So the big thing with PC graphics, for a long time, was increasing the bus speed. The original 8-bit ISA bus can push 4.77 megabytes per second, which wasn't able to animate even 320x200 because that same bus also had to do all memory access and other I/O. The 16-bit ISA slots could do 16 megabytes/second (8mhz x 16 bits.): with the system overhead, you could definitely do 320x200, and you could probably do 640x400 with very, very clever programming, but it would be iffy.

      It was about then that graphics really started getting important, and VESA Local Bus was invented to extend the spec; I believe that was a 32-bit bus running at 33, 40, or 50 megahertz, depending on the CPU it was attached to. (VLB was a very simple design that was "close" to the processor electrically, and ran off its front-side bus.) As per the calculations above, you could put out a lot of data to a VLBus card, enough to render a 1024x768 screen. PCI was invented at about the same time, and while it wasn't as fast as a 50Mhz VLB card, it was flexible enough that it eventually supplanted VLBus, which died quietly.

      PCI can do 133 megabytes/second (33 mhz x 32 bits wide). so 1024x768 is about the hard limit there. I'm not sure if they were pulling main memory off onto its own bus yet (as they do with modern machines), so if the video card was still competing with main memory, true 1024x768 at 30 frames per second would have been very difficult. With a modern machine, it would be no problem, as long as the computer wasn't trying to hit any of the other PCI cards too hard.

      Well, Intel could see the writing on the wall, and came up with AGP. AGP 1x runs at twice the speed of PCI and hence has twice the bandwidth; the later 2x, 4x, and 8x specs doubled the speed each time. An AGP8x board can shovel out about 2.1 gigabytes/second, which is enough to comfortably animate 1600x1200 at several hundred frames per second. (perhaps as much as a thousand with, again, clever programming.)

      But while they were busily solving the bandwidth problem, it went away. All this speed isn't really being used anymore. Over the last few years, PCs have switched away from using 2-D graphics to using 3-D graphics for most games. And 3-D is represented very differently; it is sent to the graphics card as a series of textures and triangles, and rendered on the graphic card itself. What this means is that the necessary bus speed DROPPED by a great deal. You can run most modern games very nicely on an NVidia PCI card. As long as your textures fit in the RAM of the card, you probably won't even be able to tell it's PCI instead of AGP.

      The other thing that AGP promised was texturing out of main RAM, but the AGP bus (not to mention the RAM in the average PC) is nowhere near fast enough to do that.

      So it's that last thing that PCI Express may be good for. Assuming that it can still do texturing out of main RAM, it's possible that that idea might finally start working. But that's pretty much the only reason it would be very interesting, at the moment; in a mostly-3d world, graphics are fine on the regular old PCI bus.

      But I bet the demo coders will love it.

  10. Read the article!!!! by Roadkills-R-Us · · Score: 2, Informative

    They specifically note that the cooling module doesn't have to just be fans, an din fact may well one day be something cooler (sic) like water cooling.

  11. 64 bit x86 from Intel? by bstadil · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The socket on the BTX board shown has 250 or so extra pins that was "explained" by Intel to be for Power reasons.

    There is a story floating on the net that this is not so. However it is likely that it for axtra bit in and out IE maybe the Secret Yamhill project is still alive and if not kicking at least not dead.

    Yamhill is if you remember the Intel backup solution for 64bit using the AMD Opteron model.

    --
    Help fight continental drift.
  12. Best case design....period. by BWJones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, Apple has lead the world in case design going back to that Blue and White G3 they produced where the side of the system dropped open with full access to all the internals, many of them right on the door. (I might argue that the old 8600 and 9600 designs are still better than any other Wintel case I've worked with).

    However, this G5 I am looking at again establishes Apple as the premiere company for case design. The case itself is aluminum for efficient transfer of heat and the multiple zone design with multiple low speed fans is absolutely the way to go until optical computing hits it's stride. All bits of the case are easy to access and they are absolutely quiet.

    Looking at the BTX cases, I see nothing impressive when it comes to cooling or quiet other than perhaps the cool circular heat sink.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    1. Re:Best case design....period. by f0rt0r · · Score: 3, Informative

      Try this case out for size -> http://www.procooling.com/reviews/html/antec_sonat a_case_review.php . It's gotten rave reviews for being super quiet and cool. I just assembled mine earlier this evening, and you can barely tell it is on unless you look at it closely. The 120mm fans in front and in back are dead quiet, plus the power supply is designed to be quiet, also. I even purchased a Zalman 6000CU CPU fan with speed control to keep the noise down.
      Oh, the case also has rubber
      grommets on the hard drive mount points to deaden any noise the HD's may make. And the fans are mounted with rubber-like screws to deaden any noise that may be caused by the fan vibrating against the case.

      --
      I can't afford a sig!
  13. Re:Why not... by Brahmastra · · Score: 2, Funny

    underclock it to 1 Mhz and it won't produce much heat

  14. I'm gonna have a hard time programming my AVRs... by mofochickamo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    without a serial port. I use ATMEL's STK500, which uses the serial port to program the microcontrollers.

    From article: The move to BTX will also bring us closer to a fully legacy-free PC, with PS/2, serial and parallel ports already beginning to disappear from prototype motherboards.

    --
    Honk if you're horny.
  15. Re:Water cooling by anubi · · Score: 2, Informative
    I agree.

    I am quite surprised that on this next "quantum leap" of case design, it wasn't designed around "heat pipes".

    There is no reason the entire case itself can't be used as a heat sink, as aluminum is quite thermally conductive. I could only imagine a case that was intentionally designed with a sort of "semi-porous" exterior to facilitate heat transfer and blackbody radiation.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

  16. Anandtech reviews... by LookSharp · · Score: 3, Funny


    *Banner Ad* *Banner Ad* *SideBar Ad*
    I really like Anadtech reviews,
    Page 1/162 [Next Page->]
    *Banner Ad* *Banner Ad* *SideBar Ad*
    but they really do seem to have
    Page 2/162 [Next Page->]
    *Banner Ad* *Banner Ad* *SideBar Ad*
    very little content on each page of their
    Page 3/162 [Next Page->]
    *Banner Ad* *Banner Ad* *SideBar Ad*
    lengthy reviews. Anyone else notice this?
    Page 4/162 [Next Page->]

    1. Re:Anandtech reviews... by cK-Gunslinger · · Score: 4, Informative


      Solution:

      1) Go to an Anandtech review
      2) Click on "Print this article" link at bottom of page
      3) Read the review in one page with no ads

      It helps to have a decent browser (ala Firebird), as the "print article" link is a java pop-up window. You can force it to a new tab with the correct settings.

  17. You knew this was coming... by Houn · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can't believe no one else posted these yet! It's just not a Slashdot Thread without them!

    "I, for one welcome our new BTX Overlords..."

    "All your form factor are belong to us!"

    "Microsoft == Evil!"

    "In Soviet Russia, CPU cools Front Intake Fan!"

    --
    The longer I'm a member of the Human Race, the more I believe Apocalypse is a valid solution.
  18. Are you ashamed of your 64-bit CPU?! by Eric+Ass+Raymond · · Score: 2, Funny
    No, of course not!

    Why would you want to place your brand new 64-bit CPU powermonster in a case that hides its true power? Would you muffle a fearsome V8 so that you cannot push the pedal to the metal at 2 PM and wake all your neighbours so that they can watch in awe as you and your car disappear into the horizon!

    How would your friends know that you have something special in that case unless they hear, no, scratch that, feel the power?

    --
    BOO! TERRO
  19. Something to include in BTX by jerw134 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One thing I want to see is a standardized case connector for the power and reset switches, LEDs, and speaker. Having each of them on a separate cable is just stupid. If they standardize that, I will be very happy.

  20. For the Love of Gawd, why is there legacy ports? by The+Lynxpro · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For supposedly a state-of-the-art motherboard design (all 3 BTX reference boards), why did Intel wuss out and keep legacy ports on these mobos?

    I'm looking at the pic for the micro-BTX board (yes, the micro edition) and I still see two (2) PS/2 ports and one (1) parallel port. What a waste. I bet they'll chicken out and retain ATA and floppy drive ports on the mobo itself too.

    http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876&p =3

    C'mon Intel, Apple did away with legacy ports back in 1997. This design won't hit the market until 2004. Quit slacking. You either want the mobo manufacturers and PC brands to move away from legacy or you don't. I personally would rather have the $3 or so that goes into putting these dopey ports on the machines go toward something else, like Bluetooth support or extra Firewire ports.

    --
    "Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
  21. Re:I'm gonna have a hard time programming my AVRs. by anubi · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Ohhh yes... I have AVR capability too. I love Atmel's products - they make really neat stuff for us embedded guys who don't wanna wanna use a sledgehammer to tap a tack into place.

    And a helluva lot of other legacy stuff.

    But, you know, a lot of those old machines were designed very conservatively. I even have some old 286 running, and will continue to run them until they no longer function. Don't replace your legacy system... kinda like replacing your old SUV with the latest sports car should the bobbling heads start advocating it. Sure, the later one may be faster, but the old SUV will tote the kids.

    In a pinch, a USB to serial converter will probably work. If its works, great, otherwise, its another case of having to do yesterday's work all over again, instead of doing today's work. Remember, you already got paid for yesterday's work... you don't get paid again for doing it again.

    I did yesterday's work yesterday. I built my foundation years ago. Today, I use it. Kinda like years ago I put copper pipe in the house because I did not wanna mess with it ever again. I pour concrete foundations, because I know the wood one, albeit cheaper, will rot, and force me to do all my work over again. Some people have the money to do yesterday's work over and over and over again. Sure, they have the latest foundation in the neighborhood. But even I wonder how they economically justify such a paradigm.

    Once I invest in a good solid foundation, I intend to use it for the lifetime I designed it for. Its not like I wanna design the Grand Coulee Dam, and demolish it every couple of years because someone came up with a different mix of concrete... Once I go through the trouble of building the thing, I intend it to perform its intended function from then on, usually indefinitely. Kinda like those Romans did things, where their aqueducts and roads still function as originally designed to this day.

    I really take no thrill in developing the capability to sign checks to pay others to do the work... I take great pride in having the capability to do it. ( And also take comfort in knowing how my stuff works, as well as what to do if it doenn't work the way I want it to work. I think almost all Open-Source guys have this same mental picture. )

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

  22. Planned obsolescence at its best by foonf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The advantages of moving the CPU to the front of the case, defining thermal zones, and so on, are clear, but overall this does look to me more like just another excuse to obsolete the cases already in use and add another marketing buzzword for manufacturers.

    The most serious change to BTX versus ATX is switching the side of the expansion slots. What possible advantage could this have, aside from making it incompatible with existing ATX cases? In the reference examples they show, it just means that everything is moved to the opposite side of the case. As for the specially defined locations for the CPU and motherboard north and southbridges, they are pretty similar to a lot of boards already on the market (just reversed of course), and as the sizes of components change few BTX boards in the future will follow these specs exactly anyway. And the rest of the "advantages" (riser cards for horizontally-mounted video adapters, a sub-micro form factor, air ducts to chassis fans) already exist in practice with ATX anyway.

    In the mean time, I hope I'll still be able to get new-generation ATX mainboards for the next couple years, because I see nothing in this new format worth buying a new chassis over.

    --

    "(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
    1. Re:Planned obsolescence at its best by cmowire · · Score: 4, Informative

      A few things.

      First, heat rises. Which means that you can use convection.

      Second, I think they are deliberately making it incompatable with ATX because they want to make sure that you put a BTX motherboard in a proper case. To be quiet, they are going to have to run with as little cooling as possible for a given configuration, thus little things like having the vent holes done up properly are going to count.

      Third, you are more likely to have short PCI cards than room in front of the CPU for hard drives. Sure the video cards are still huge, but most everything else is pretty small.

      Fourth, the main push is for tiny motherboards, not large motherboards. The full size format is there mostly so that there will be a large enough BTX audience to make a difference.

      It should be interesting to see how this plays out. From the looks of it, it doesn't look to be too dual-CPU friendly. There's not much that's strictly wrong with the ATX standard right now (There was major Baby-AT compatability problems and random headaches back in the day) so there's not as much of an incentive to switch form factors. The enthusiasts, who can be counted upon to upgrade regularly and choose whatever brightly colored, feature-filled motherboard is available, aren't going to find much of an audience. It doesn't look too friendly for 1 and 2 U rackmount systems.

      But it might do some good work on replacing the LPX form factor and many of the myriad not-particularly-standard tiny ATX standards.

      Of course, those who have been watching the computer market for a long time know that the case market has moved towards small cases, and then back to tower cases, several times so far. Apple didn't revolutionize the computing market with the iMac, the case has been part of your positioning ever since the who-knows-how-many colored Cray supercomputers. People loved C64-style keyboard-is-the-computer cases for a span of time. People wanted thin, sexy cases before almost everybody switched to tower cases that could be hidden under the desk. Beige Toasters like the early Macs and the PS/2 mod 25 were popular for a time, but there was a span where nobody made them.

      --
      Gentoo Sucks
    2. Re:Planned obsolescence at its best by lspd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The most serious change to BTX versus ATX is switching the side of the expansion slots. What possible advantage could this have, aside from making it incompatible with existing ATX cases?

      If this little change is so important, why don't we see anyone manufacturing ATX tower cases where the motherboard mounts on the left side rather than the right. You'd get the same effect (CPU in line with the case fan) without designing a completely new style of motherboards. This sounds more like an excuse to eliminate PS2, serial and parallel ports. My keyboard and mouse are plugged into PS2 ports, my printer is plugged into the parallel port, and I use the serial port to log in to headless servers. You only need a single USB port to plug in a hub, so why do they want to eliminate all the older ports?

  23. I don't get it by CodeHog · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's so new and great about this? You want a quiet and cool pc? Turn it off.

    --
    Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
  24. Re:Is this designed just to piss us off? by madcow_ucsb · · Score: 2, Informative

    People have already said this, but...

    PCI-X != PCI-Express!

    I'm no expert on these technologies, so I may be a bit off here (I'm a firmware guy and at my company, PCI-Express is still in the realm of the hardware people. This is just what I've picked up from being around them...)

    PCI-X is just an extension of existing PCI. Basically the same thing but faster and backwards compatible (I believe).

    PCI-Express (which seems to be the standard most of the industry is pushing for, judging by what I was hearing on booth duty at IDF this week) is totally different. It's serial and can be thought of as being similar to ethernet. Kinda like the computer is a ethernet switch and all the devices are nodes plugged into it. It's faster and far more efficient (at least than PCI) when multiple devices are being accessed at once. The physical layer got simpler, but now there's a whole lot more complexity on the data link layer. And PCI-Express is supposed to be software compatible with PCI, so in theory, manufacturers shouldn't have to write new drivers for their fancy new PCI-Express devices. That's great news, since in these situations the software is typically more complex than the hardware.

    Feel free to correct me here (I gotta learn about it sooner or later, since I'll probably be writing firmware for these things in the not-too-distant future...)

  25. bloody ethernet port by Espen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why are these monkeys still putting the ethernet port in top of two usb ports? Why would I ever unplug my computer from the network (unless I was moving it)? Why then allow the ethernet cable block my access to the USB ports, which I'm much more likely to want to unplug? This has got to be one of the most stupid aspects of the port layout in current designs, and I pains me to see it hasn't dawned on the designer how stupid it is.

  26. Re:Great by Seeker5528 · · Score: 2, Informative

    "So now I'll have to buy expansion cards (and waste slots) to use my IBM Model M, UPS comms cable, modem and printer?"

    Some of the laptops are coming with port replicators now. Here are links to a couple of port replicators:

    http://www.goldxproducts.com/usb/1240.htm

    http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=300F

    Later, Seeker