Need some help with bandwidth bottleneck avoidance inside the PC.

HP isn't the most helpful in telling you what you've bought down to every detail, but I'm working on that angle. My
current assumption is that I have an available PCI Express slot (even after the Video/Sound ones).

Assuming I do, is it worthwhile to go all out and get a FireWire 800 ahem... IEEE 1394 800 Mbps card? I'm planning to
connect up probably a DV camera (someday, I can dream...), but more recently, a Media Card reader. I want the fastest
possible data transfer from the Compact Flash card my Canon uses. It's not out of the question that I will someday
spring for an external DVD writer, and I don't want the weird/slow connection to increase the risk of buffer underruns.

I could really use a good conversion tool or some more understanding of the conversion between MHz and MB/s. Seems
others have asked this question, but so far there is no detail about how to calculate this for yourself. It looks like
the essential piece of data is how many bits/bytes are transfered across the FSB and PCI buses per clock tick - this is
a hard stat to find. Can someone explain?

I mean, if my FSB can't transfer data to the RAM as fast as it's coming off the PCI Express bus, then why bother using
that slot? I don't think that's the case, but right now, I cannot confirm it.

I'm looking for the whole picture (I've been piecing it together), step by step from the media card to the reader, to
the external connection, to the PCI bus, to the FSB, to the RAM, to the CPU, (to the) hard drive. I'm trying to
eliminate bandwidth bottlenecks if I can, and save money on components if I can't. (FYI: My HD is SCSI @ 320 MB/s)

Also, since I have SCSI, I can look into maybe finding an external SCSI Media Card reading device if it's faster than
available PCI bandwidth. You can see my dilemma.


References to similar threads in this NG (links from google, because its' easier to search that way):

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...04334663c3ce30

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...49af1815fd8b57

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...8d358eb6fab316
"the SD RAM transfer speed at 100mhz is 800mB/s while the 100mhz
DDR is 1.6gB/s" -- Anthony Brohan

The last statement made me realize that there's no way to calculate MB/s from MHz unless you know how much data moves at
each tick.

Since I haven't had any response at all, i'll send this to another NG. Or maybe no one knows?

On Thu, 19 May 2005 02:12:28 GMT, wrote:

>HP isn't the most helpful in telling you what you've bought down to every detail, but I'm working on that angle. My
>current assumption is that I have an available PCI Express slot (even after the Video/Sound ones).
>
>Assuming I do, is it worthwhile to go all out and get a FireWire 800 ahem... IEEE 1394 800 Mbps card? I'm planning to
>connect up probably a DV camera (someday, I can dream...), but more recently, a Media Card reader. I want the fastest
>possible data transfer from the Compact Flash card my Canon uses. It's not out of the question that I will someday
>spring for an external DVD writer, and I don't want the weird/slow connection to increase the risk of buffer underruns.
>
>I could really use a good conversion tool or some more understanding of the conversion between MHz and MB/s. Seems
>others have asked this question, but so far there is no detail about how to calculate this for yourself. It looks like
>the essential piece of data is how many bits/bytes are transfered across the FSB and PCI buses per clock tick - this is
>a hard stat to find. Can someone explain?
>
>I mean, if my FSB can't transfer data to the RAM as fast as it's coming off the PCI Express bus, then why bother using
>that slot? I don't think that's the case, but right now, I cannot confirm it.
>
>I'm looking for the whole picture (I've been piecing it together), step by step from the media card to the reader, to
>the external connection, to the PCI bus, to the FSB, to the RAM, to the CPU, (to the) hard drive. I'm trying to
>eliminate bandwidth bottlenecks if I can, and save money on components if I can't. (FYI: My HD is SCSI @ 320 MB/s)
>
>Also, since I have SCSI, I can look into maybe finding an external SCSI Media Card reading device if it's faster than
>available PCI bandwidth. You can see my dilemma.
>
>
>References to similar threads in this NG (links from google, because its' easier to search that way):
>
>http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...04334663c3ce30
>
>http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...49af1815fd8b57
>
>http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...8d358eb6fab316
>"the SD RAM transfer speed at 100mhz is 800mB/s while the 100mhz
>DDR is 1.6gB/s" -- Anthony Brohan
>
>The last statement made me realize that there's no way to calculate MB/s from MHz unless you know how much data moves at
>each tick.