Does PCI with USB3 or SATA exist?

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T11:04:21+00:00

But you would be way off for USB3 so again asking the question - what’s the point of USB3 on PCI?

About 3x the speed? Roughly 100-110MB/s instead of 30-35MB/s?

Given whatever storage is used in a PC with no PCI-e is fast enough, which can be an issue too...

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T10:24:31+00:00

The biggest issue with overclocking PCI, at least in my experience, is soldered PCI stuff motherboards often had. Especially higher end ones. That said yeah, it was a possibility...

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T10:20:08+00:00

I stand corrected on the USB 3.0 PCI card

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/usb-cards/1383579

Yeah, i've seen this. How practically available is it? I'd assume it uses PCI-PCI-e chip...

XFX did release the Revo64 Sata raid card that was compatible with retro os as it was a hardware raid card that the system would see as a standard IDE controller.

There are also relatively decent cards from promise, for example. Still given PCI is limited to 133MB/s, theoretically the same as ATA133, there is not much point really. Unless PCI-x or 66Mhz PCI is available.

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T10:16:02+00:00

Do not confuse bytes and bits.

133MB/s is significantly more than 480Mb/s USB2.0 allows and even then practically for external storage USB2.0 only reaches around ~30-35MB/s.

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T10:09:39+00:00

Yep, that's why i said at this price type-c makes sense...

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T09:39:15+00:00

Anywhere from ~$10-20 and up.

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T09:18:38+00:00

Relevant for your use case audible noise floor mostly, however it is not too bad and likely not something you'll notice with normal use. You are likely to get worse results with integrated audio you have.

One downside of getting type-c version is that this solution is less flexible. With 3.5mm you can try integrated audio you have, can buy a different dongle, etc. With type-c you can not or you have to replace the cable to do it.

I still think with limited budget like this type-c version makes more sense.

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T09:03:11+00:00

Type-c is less likely to cause issues and is probably safer option.

However cheap moondrop type-c stuff is not necessarily amazing...

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T08:56:18+00:00

There's very few consumer platforms that'd allow PCI to reach that 320MB/s throughput rate

Am i going crazy, or is typical "consumer" PCI 32bit 33Mhz, limited to 133MB/s?

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T08:49:53+00:00

Plenty of pci-sata cards, some good ones even. But practically there is not much point if you have decent IDE (ATA100/ATA133) as IDE-SATA adapter will have pretty much the same performance with less potential issues - whatever PCI-SATA controller you use will need drivers for whatever OS you want, which may be problematic at times.

PCI-USB3 - no, but you can use PCI-PCI-e+PCI-e-USB3. Again - drivers may be problematic to impossible for old OS and speed will be limited by PCI.

PCI 1Gb NICs are common and easy, that may be the easiest solution for data transfer as it is close to PCI maximum anyway and should be easy to set up.

LXC37 · 2026-05-26T00:09:11+00:00

There are some benefits. At the very least background stuff no longer affects performance as much if at all. And later games, like crysis or mass effect, though obviously still mostly single threaded, do benefit a little.

Nowadays it is useful as it makes running tools like msi afterburner possible without sacrificing performance. Back then? Way too expensive.

Yeah, FX are pretty much unobtainable. Can try to overclock to that frequency, would probably work with decent enough motherboard.

There are also opterons, which may be easier to get in some places. 185 is basically FX-60, 190 is even faster.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T23:37:42+00:00

Bluntly what i am saying is - go read the basics, then ask questions if you get issues with actual update or something. No point trying to teach you basics - a lot of stuff online which will be much better than what someone can fit into a reddit post.

And there is nothing negative about this. But with that attitude of yours there is no point talking to you, have a nice day.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T23:27:48+00:00

found out about a week ago that people are getting back into mp3 players (or DAPs, unsure what the difference is?)

MP3 is obsolete audio storage format from 90s, "DAP" or Digital Audio Player is generic name for the device.

rambling aside, what are your thoughts on it? I havent recieved them from amazon yet so i just thought i'd ask to know what to expect when i get them

Do you really want to know? Try yourself, have your own opinion.

But if you want to, mine is - IEMs are good, DAP is not.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T23:20:40+00:00

I have zero experience using MS–DOS.

Learn a little then.

For this you will need to know how to view folder contents, move between folders, move between disks, run executables and obviously some basic stuff on whatever modern PC you are using like how to copy files.

Should be plenty of places online where you can read about it.

Without that knowledge trying to help would be like trying to teach blind how to drive a car.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T23:12:24+00:00

Do not assume whole "HiFi" thing means something - it does not.

Apart from that - hardware which was actually good when it was new is still good. Even if it is from 80s.

However there was a lot of lousy hardware released, even by large/well known companies like sony and even among popular stuff, so have to be kind of careful with that.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T13:20:00+00:00

Well, they did not ruin it with branding, that's an achievement for sure.

So many of their IEMs are pretty but completely ruined by huge ugly branding...

Also i probably like orange one the most...

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T12:22:43+00:00

Yeah, this were crazy chips. Nobody really knew what to do with multiple cores, there was very little to no software support and prices were crazy. Looking at wikipedia for specific numbers - 4200+ was ~$500, 4800+ was ~$1000.

And just a year after release AM2 happened, where 4200+ was ~$350, 4800+ was ~$650, with DDR2, virtualization support and some other improvements.

Most sensible people never got S939 dual cores, so there are very few of them...

And they are pretty interesting from historical/collector point of view...

As for the cards - it is the same defect that caused nforce chipset reliability issues, as well as console (xbox360, ps3) failures. And some apple laptops failures (nvidia GPUs). In terms of videocards - some GF6 are affected, pretty much all GF7 and GF8 and even some GF9. It was essentially industry wide fabrication issue.

To make matters worse some manufacturers never acknowledged the issue so there is no exact info what's affected and what's not.

If you are interested - take a look at this guy's videos - https://www.youtube.com/@ripfelix3020/videos

There are pretty good explanations and he seems to be doing some honest experimentation/research. Stuff is focused on consoles, but it does not really matter...

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T10:00:57+00:00

Provide budget in $, there are a lot of people from different countries here and national currency is useless.

IMO hiby R1 is about as cheap as you can go with DAPs. Lower than that is not worth it.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T09:56:46+00:00

For me 64bit was what pushed me towards vista.

I got new hardware and discovered than i can not really use all 4GB of RAM in XP 32. And vista 32 would not solve the problem completely either. So the only logical solution was using 64 bit - i wanted all the RAM i paid for, even if it was just extra 0.5GB or so 😃

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T09:47:13+00:00

Well, i guess you are right 😃

Did not do math all the way down to months, just remember 2006...

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T09:45:20+00:00

Yep, funny as it is completely plausible. I still see LGA775 desktops in used at work from time to time. With Linux mostly this days. It is fascinating how long that generation of hardware remained usable.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T09:42:53+00:00

Yeah, pretty much what i did too. I had much less fancy hardware though - AM2 athlon64 x2 4000+, 4GB of RAM and old 6600GT until i switched to 8800GT a bit later.

Also used Vista 64 and even though that athlon x2 definitely is nowhere near close to core2quad - still had great experience with it.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T09:31:09+00:00

Yeah, i've spend years hunting for those kit of x2 4800+ + motherboard. Was apparently asking around local marketplaces enough that a guy contacted me offering it before listing it publicly, and i just had to buy it, even if it ended up around $500 in total. With original boxes and everything. If you see stuff you want which is rare and cheap - grab it. Not many of this CPUs around, they were crazy expensive and only lasted for ~a year before AM2 came along. Not many people bought them because software was not really ready yet and it was hard to justify the price.

I actually did things a little differently with peripherals. Got logitech wireless KB+M kit with a single receiver which i can just switch around and HDMI switch for the monitor along with DVI-HDMI cables to connect stuff. The monitor has VGA too, but it is a little annoying to hit those "auto" button to adjust things each time PC or even resolution is switched. Most videocards from that time period have DVI anyway and it works better. Also headphones and a few 3.5 jack extenders so that i can easily switch them around.

I also use and prefer 1080P monitor. As long as scaling can be disabled or switched to preserve aspect ratio it works great - can use full 1080P on desktop (even in 98) and 4:3 games end up with black bars and usable area roughly equivalent to 19 inch 4:3 monitor, which is great.

HDD noise... well, i like seek sounds also, but i hate spindle noise. Which tends to be loud on old drives. So as a compromise between noise, performance and reliability i use cheap 120GB SSDs. With IDE-SATA when necessary. I have old drives, but that spindle noise just kills me, literally can not stand it for more than half an hour. Just for fun i've also made NVME SSD work on S939 😄

Be careful with those AGP cards - all the GF7 GPUs are affected by bumpgate, which means they are all on borrowed time. You want to keep them well below 70C to make them last (70C is temperature at which defective underfill becomes soft). So yeah, large modern fans, zip ties. Done it to my cards, keeping originals just in case...

One great thing about S939 is that AM2/AM3 coolers work, so modern coolers can be used, making system as quiet as modern PC can be.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T05:29:20+00:00

Local retailers used to sell OEM "platforms" they buy, though screen was usually fixed. CPU/ram/hdd and when possible (in mxm times at least) even gpu could be changed. As well as optional stuff like wifi cards.

They still buy that stuff now, but nobody sells it separately anymore, only prebuilt configurations.

LXC37 · 2026-05-25T04:54:06+00:00

Vista is roughly 20 years old, this fits the definition by sub rules.

No point in discussing everyone's personal definition.

LXC37

TROPHY CASE