Sound Card - PCI or PCI-e?

Originally posted by ablahblah i'm looking into getting a sound card, and i'm debating whether to use PCI or PCI-e 1x as an interface. The two cards in question are Asus's  D2 and D2X, which are virtually identica besides the bundled software and more importantly, the bus interface. Which do you think is better?

If the only difference is the bus interface then neither, they're both the same card. I believe both PCI and PCIe x1 have similar bandwidth, and a sound card shouldn't come close to saturating either of them, so choose based on which one you have free at the moment.

On a lot of common motherboards, like the EVGA x58 LE and Micro, the PCIe x1 slot gets blocked by the primary GPU when it's in the primary PCIe x16 slot, but some might be arranged different and block the conventional PCI slot instead. Example blow.


This is an EVGA x58 LE. The Micro is set up the same way except it doesn't have slot 5 or 6. If you have a GPU in slot 1 then it is also going to block slot 2. If you have a second GPU in slot 3 then that second GPU will block slot 4. At this point you would be totally out of slots on a Micro, but on the LE slots 5 and 6 will still be free, meaning you would want to buy a PCIe x1 slotted sound card because they fit into all sized PCIe slots, x1/x4/x8/x16.

Hmm. Sorry, didn't mean to get on the soapbox there, you may have already of known most of that. Just look at your motherboard and check what kind of lane you have available, or will have available in the future if you're planning on getting any other additional cards, and go from there.

Originally posted by ablahblah heh yep knew all that already. i have dual single slot gpus with open and accessible pci, pci-e and pci-e 1x in between, pci 1x taken up, meaning that a pci-e and pci are open. hence, me posting this topic. comparitively, though, which would be more preferred for a sound-card, though?

I think it mostly just boils down to a case by case basis on what kind of lane someone has available. But if you have both a PCIe and PCI available then I suppose going with a PCIe x1 format card might be preferable since they are compatible with all sized PCIe lanes giving you more card arrangement possibilities.

matters the motherboard. the Classified, has a pcie slot up top that works perfect for sound cards. so pick a pci or pcie card depending on what slots re best available.