K8N-LR PCIe & PCI-X

I read on a forum that you are not able to use both PCIe and the PCI-X
with an AMD Athlon chip on this K8N-LR. Does the CPU make a difference
on how many PCI slots you can use or is it the chip set on the motherboard?

bman wrote:
> I read on a forum that you are not able to use both PCIe and the PCI-X
> with an AMD Athlon chip on this K8N-LR. Does the CPU make a difference
> on how many PCI slots you can use or is it the chip set on the motherboard?

That doesn't make sense to me.

The processor is independent of the subtending busses. In other words, stuff
below the Nvidia 2200 in the picture below, cannot "know" what kind of processor
sits above. If they wanted, Asus could even have used a socket AM2 or a socket F
processor if they wanted. (Asus chose this architecture, as it only requires
one coherent HT bus. Which is why they ended up with the Intel PXH-V, rather
than the more natural fit with an AMD 8131 tunnel.)

While I cannot find a block diagram of your board on some web site,
this is my own guess as to what it looks like. Nvidia 2200 Pro has
20 lanes and 4 links. These would be split x8 for video, x8 for
PXH-V PCI-X bridge, x1 for each of two Ethernet chips, leaving a
couple lanes unused. I don't really know whether they bothered to
connect the Intel PXH-V bridge with x4 or x8 lanes. I think x4 would be
enough to handle 1066MB/sec from a 133MHz PCI-X card transferring 8 bytes
at a time.

S939 <--------> 4 DIMM slots
Processor
|
| 16x16 HT 1000MHz, 4GB/sec up and down
|
Nvidia 2200 Pro
|
+---------+-------+-+-------+------+--------+
| | | | | |
| | x8 | x8 | x1 | x1 | LPC
| | | | | |
PCI32/33 Video PXH-V BCM5721 BCM5721 SuperIO -- Floppy
| | GbE GbE | -- etc...
PCI32/33 PCIX64/133 Flash
| |
ATI_Rage PCIX64/133
XL
|
MiniPCI?

I'm not seeing a reason for this architecture to have any limitations.
The x8 video is 2GB/sec. The PCIX bus at 133MHz is 1GB/sec unidirectional.
Which leaves at least 1GB/sec for the PCI 33MHz bus, hard drives, and
the two GbE Ethernet chips.

Do you have a link to the forum you mention ? I'd like to see what they
think the problem is.

Do you own the board already, or are you thinking of buying it ? In the
Asus forums, there are not many posts, implying very few have been
purchased.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us

Paul

Paul wrote:
> bman wrote:
>> I read on a forum that you are not able to use both PCIe and the PCI-X
>> with an AMD Athlon chip on this K8N-LR. Does the CPU make a difference
>> on how many PCI slots you can use or is it the chip set on the
>> motherboard?
>
> That doesn't make sense to me.
>
> The processor is independent of the subtending busses. In other words,
> stuff
> below the Nvidia 2200 in the picture below, cannot "know" what kind of
> processor
> sits above. If they wanted, Asus could even have used a socket AM2 or a
> socket F
> processor if they wanted. (Asus chose this architecture, as it only
> requires
> one coherent HT bus. Which is why they ended up with the Intel PXH-V,
> rather
> than the more natural fit with an AMD 8131 tunnel.)
>
> While I cannot find a block diagram of your board on some web site,
> this is my own guess as to what it looks like. Nvidia 2200 Pro has
> 20 lanes and 4 links. These would be split x8 for video, x8 for
> PXH-V PCI-X bridge, x1 for each of two Ethernet chips, leaving a
> couple lanes unused. I don't really know whether they bothered to
> connect the Intel PXH-V bridge with x4 or x8 lanes. I think x4 would be
> enough to handle 1066MB/sec from a 133MHz PCI-X card transferring 8 bytes
> at a time.
>
> S939 <--------> 4 DIMM slots
> Processor
> |
> | 16x16 HT 1000MHz, 4GB/sec up and down
> |
> Nvidia 2200 Pro
> |
> +---------+-------+-+-------+------+--------+
> | | | | | |
> | | x8 | x8 | x1 | x1 | LPC
> | | | | | |
> PCI32/33 Video PXH-V BCM5721 BCM5721 SuperIO -- Floppy
> | | GbE GbE | -- etc...
> PCI32/33 PCIX64/133 Flash
> | |
> ATI_Rage PCIX64/133
> XL
> |
> MiniPCI?
>
> I'm not seeing a reason for this architecture to have any limitations.
> The x8 video is 2GB/sec. The PCIX bus at 133MHz is 1GB/sec unidirectional.
> Which leaves at least 1GB/sec for the PCI 33MHz bus, hard drives, and
> the two GbE Ethernet chips.
>
> Do you have a link to the forum you mention ? I'd like to see what they
> think the problem is.
>
> Do you own the board already, or are you thinking of buying it ? In the
> Asus forums, there are not many posts, implying very few have been
> purchased.
>
> http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us
>
>
> Paul
Thanks for your information and I am thinking of buying the board but I
haven't yet. I mainly want the 64bit slot 133mhz for my scsi cards. I
did do some more research and I think what the guy was trying to say was
that PCIe Express slot only runs at 8x because they split the bandwidth
to the Intel's PCI-X bridge. I did download the manual on the board at
it says either slot populated will give you 64bit@133mhz but if you use
both the slots it will result in 64bit@100mhz. I think I will still buy
the board because the PCIe 8x limitation is no big deal. Thanks again.

Might I recomend another board, the M2N32-WS Pro. Its abit more, but it
supports the latest AMD socket and is feature rich. I have this board in my
personal pc and cant be happier with it. I have a 5200 CPU with 2gb oDDR2
800mhz ram and it screams. It also runs my PCI-X SATA raid card flawlessly.

Dan


"bman" <> wrote in message
news:WiDOh.1361$...
> Paul wrote:
>> bman wrote:
>>> I read on a forum that you are not able to use both PCIe and the PCI-X
>>> with an AMD Athlon chip on this K8N-LR. Does the CPU make a difference
>>> on how many PCI slots you can use or is it the chip set on the
>>> motherboard?
>>
>> That doesn't make sense to me.
>>
>> The processor is independent of the subtending busses. In other words,
>> stuff
>> below the Nvidia 2200 in the picture below, cannot "know" what kind of
>> processor
>> sits above. If they wanted, Asus could even have used a socket AM2 or a
>> socket F
>> processor if they wanted. (Asus chose this architecture, as it only
>> requires
>> one coherent HT bus. Which is why they ended up with the Intel PXH-V,
>> rather
>> than the more natural fit with an AMD 8131 tunnel.)
>>
>> While I cannot find a block diagram of your board on some web site,
>> this is my own guess as to what it looks like. Nvidia 2200 Pro has
>> 20 lanes and 4 links. These would be split x8 for video, x8 for
>> PXH-V PCI-X bridge, x1 for each of two Ethernet chips, leaving a
>> couple lanes unused. I don't really know whether they bothered to
>> connect the Intel PXH-V bridge with x4 or x8 lanes. I think x4 would be
>> enough to handle 1066MB/sec from a 133MHz PCI-X card transferring 8 bytes
>> at a time.
>>
>> S939 <--------> 4 DIMM slots
>> Processor
>> |
>> | 16x16 HT 1000MHz, 4GB/sec up and down
>> |
>> Nvidia 2200 Pro
>> |
>> +---------+-------+-+-------+------+--------+
>> | | | | | |
>> | | x8 | x8 | x1 | x1 | LPC
>> | | | | | |
>> PCI32/33 Video PXH-V BCM5721 BCM5721 SuperIO -- Floppy
>> | | GbE GbE | -- etc...
>> PCI32/33 PCIX64/133 Flash
>> | |
>> ATI_Rage PCIX64/133
>> XL
>> |
>> MiniPCI?
>>
>> I'm not seeing a reason for this architecture to have any limitations.
>> The x8 video is 2GB/sec. The PCIX bus at 133MHz is 1GB/sec
>> unidirectional.
>> Which leaves at least 1GB/sec for the PCI 33MHz bus, hard drives, and
>> the two GbE Ethernet chips.
>>
>> Do you have a link to the forum you mention ? I'd like to see what they
>> think the problem is.
>>
>> Do you own the board already, or are you thinking of buying it ? In the
>> Asus forums, there are not many posts, implying very few have been
>> purchased.
>>
>> http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us
>> Paul
> Thanks for your information and I am thinking of buying the board but I
> haven't yet. I mainly want the 64bit slot 133mhz for my scsi cards. I did
> do some more research and I think what the guy was trying to say was that
> PCIe Express slot only runs at 8x because they split the bandwidth to the
> Intel's PCI-X bridge. I did download the manual on the board at it says
> either slot populated will give you 64bit@133mhz but if you use both the
> slots it will result in 64bit@100mhz. I think I will still buy the board
> because the PCIe 8x limitation is no big deal. Thanks again.

Dan wrote:
> Might I recomend another board, the M2N32-WS Pro. Its abit more, but it
> supports the latest AMD socket and is feature rich. I have this board in my
> personal pc and cant be happier with it. I have a 5200 CPU with 2gb oDDR2
> 800mhz ram and it screams. It also runs my PCI-X SATA raid card flawlessly.
>
> Dan
>
>
> "bman" <> wrote in message
> news:WiDOh.1361$...
>> Paul wrote:
>>> bman wrote:
>>>> I read on a forum that you are not able to use both PCIe and the PCI-X
>>>> with an AMD Athlon chip on this K8N-LR. Does the CPU make a difference
>>>> on how many PCI slots you can use or is it the chip set on the
>>>> motherboard?
>>> That doesn't make sense to me.
>>>
>>> The processor is independent of the subtending busses. In other words,
>>> stuff
>>> below the Nvidia 2200 in the picture below, cannot "know" what kind of
>>> processor
>>> sits above. If they wanted, Asus could even have used a socket AM2 or a
>>> socket F
>>> processor if they wanted. (Asus chose this architecture, as it only
>>> requires
>>> one coherent HT bus. Which is why they ended up with the Intel PXH-V,
>>> rather
>>> than the more natural fit with an AMD 8131 tunnel.)
>>>
>>> While I cannot find a block diagram of your board on some web site,
>>> this is my own guess as to what it looks like. Nvidia 2200 Pro has
>>> 20 lanes and 4 links. These would be split x8 for video, x8 for
>>> PXH-V PCI-X bridge, x1 for each of two Ethernet chips, leaving a
>>> couple lanes unused. I don't really know whether they bothered to
>>> connect the Intel PXH-V bridge with x4 or x8 lanes. I think x4 would be
>>> enough to handle 1066MB/sec from a 133MHz PCI-X card transferring 8 bytes
>>> at a time.
>>>
>>> S939 <--------> 4 DIMM slots
>>> Processor
>>> |
>>> | 16x16 HT 1000MHz, 4GB/sec up and down
>>> |
>>> Nvidia 2200 Pro
>>> |
>>> +---------+-------+-+-------+------+--------+
>>> | | | | | |
>>> | | x8 | x8 | x1 | x1 | LPC
>>> | | | | | |
>>> PCI32/33 Video PXH-V BCM5721 BCM5721 SuperIO -- Floppy
>>> | | GbE GbE | -- etc...
>>> PCI32/33 PCIX64/133 Flash
>>> | |
>>> ATI_Rage PCIX64/133
>>> XL
>>> |
>>> MiniPCI?
>>>
>>> I'm not seeing a reason for this architecture to have any limitations.
>>> The x8 video is 2GB/sec. The PCIX bus at 133MHz is 1GB/sec
>>> unidirectional.
>>> Which leaves at least 1GB/sec for the PCI 33MHz bus, hard drives, and
>>> the two GbE Ethernet chips.
>>>
>>> Do you have a link to the forum you mention ? I'd like to see what they
>>> think the problem is.
>>>
>>> Do you own the board already, or are you thinking of buying it ? In the
>>> Asus forums, there are not many posts, implying very few have been
>>> purchased.
>>>
>>> http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...Language=en-us
>>> Paul
>> Thanks for your information and I am thinking of buying the board but I
>> haven't yet. I mainly want the 64bit slot 133mhz for my scsi cards. I did
>> do some more research and I think what the guy was trying to say was that
>> PCIe Express slot only runs at 8x because they split the bandwidth to the
>> Intel's PCI-X bridge. I did download the manual on the board at it says
>> either slot populated will give you 64bit@133mhz but if you use both the
>> slots it will result in 64bit@100mhz. I think I will still buy the board
>> because the PCIe 8x limitation is no big deal. Thanks again.
>
>
Thanks! I'll check that one out.

Dan wrote:
> Might I recomend another board, the M2N32-WS Pro. Its abit more, but it
> supports the latest AMD socket and is feature rich. I have this board in my
> personal pc and cant be happier with it. I have a 5200 CPU with 2gb oDDR2
> 800mhz ram and it screams. It also runs my PCI-X SATA raid card flawlessly.
>
> Dan

I thought that board had an on board SATA controller?

"Don Ocean" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Dan wrote:
>> Might I recomend another board, the M2N32-WS Pro. Its abit more, but it
>> supports the latest AMD socket and is feature rich. I have this board in
>> my personal pc and cant be happier with it. I have a 5200 CPU with 2gb
>> oDDR2 800mhz ram and it screams. It also runs my PCI-X SATA raid card
>> flawlessly.
>>
>> Dan
>
> I thought that board had an on board SATA controller?

It does, I use it for my 2 SATA DVD burners and my 2 74gb Raptors. Raid is
better suited to a dedicated card for performance. In this case the card has
an oboard 8086 cpu and 64mb of ram with 6 300gb drives in a RAID 5 array.

Dan