Lee W wrote
However I've noticed that it is a 64-Bit PCI Card. Can I still use this in a 32-Bit Slot. I think that I read something once that said it would work but at a reduced bandwidth.
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
Page 16 of the Installation Guide says a 32bit slot is fine.
From: Peter Farrow peter@farrows.org
I use one of my 8500-8s in a 32bit slot on an MSI Dual PIII motherboard with no problems...
Two things of note:
1) 66MHz capable cards
The "6" in 7506 and 8506 indicate it is 66MHz capable. The 7500 (fka 7850) and 8500 are 33MHz capable, as are all prior models.
All 7000/8000 series cards are 64-bit _except_ the 7000-2 (fka 7200) and 7006-2 (66MHz, but 32-bit).
2) Multiple PCI/PCI-X busses
The most important consideration beyond bandwidth is the PCI bus. I have seen far too many people stick a 3Ware card into a system that has a _single_ 32-bit@33MHz PCI bus.
Back in the 1999-2001 timeframe, I made a buttload of money just coming in and ripping out i440BX and i440GX mainboards and putting in ServerWorks ServerSet IIILE/HE mainboards for Pentium II/III systems.
3-4x performance is achievable by just getting the storage and NIC on separate PCI (or PCI-X) busses. Especially at today's disk transfer rates and GbE on the same system.
[ SIDE NOTE: A good GbE card with 256KB SRAM and using 9000 byte jumbo frames also helps. ]
-- Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org