My server at work (an ageing Compaq proliant PIII) has 64 bit PCI-X slots, and I need USB 2.0 cos USB1.0 is too slow for my backups to external LaCie terrabyte of storage. Can I use normal 32 bit PCI cards in the 64 bit slot? Googling this informs me I can use a 64bit card in a 32 bit slot (albeit at reduced bandwidth) but would the other way around damage the motherboard?
Afaik you can use a PCI card in a PCI-X slot providing it has a 3.3v notch, which shouldn't be a problem as all modern 32bit PCI cards have them.
are the 64-bit versions more expensive? I couldn't imagine one costing more than 5 bucks off of ebay.
The only thing I seem to remember is that when you plug a PCI card in it will slow any other PCI-X slots connected to the controller down to PCI speeds, but I'm not 100% sure.
I'm glad I stumbled accross this thread, I have a motherboard with 2 PCI-X slots that I was thinking were pretty much useless; I have no need for a RAID or SCSI controller cards. Being able to use them for standard PCI cards is much more useful. Slightly off topic, but other than graphics cards where are all the PCI-Express cards? To date I have only seen one, a dual tuner TV card, but no sound cards, USB controller cards etc.
Areca, LSI, Adaptec and Broadcom make high end SATA and SAS controllers for PCI-Express, but as of right now PCI-Express cards are thin on the ground compared with the myriad of PCI addin boards.
