[LAU] does a pci-e x1 to pci adapter work with Linux soundcards and existing drivers?

[Clemens Ladisch]

Niels Mayer wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 11:21 PM, Clemens Ladisch <clemens at ladisch.de> wrote:
> > These adapters are useful only if you need some features of a PCI card
> > and if your mainboard has already run out of free PCI slots.
> 
> Hopefully "all features" of the PCI card would be available, right?
> There wouldn't be any bus-mastering issues, etc?

Yes.  No.

> Would there be any additional issues with combining multiple ice1712
> cards where some might be on PCI and some on converted PCI-e? Cards
> like Terratec EWS88 or M-Audio Delta claim to share interrupts when
> multiple cards of the same type are installed. I would imagine in a
> PCIe slot that might not be the case?

You'd have multiple independent PCI buses.  However, those interrupts
still must be mapped to some of the interrupt controller's interrupts.
This mapping is probably different, but there might be more or less
sharing.

> Also, the "literature" from the URLs posted earlier states:
> ////////////////
> Technical benefit: A card in the PCIe slot gets the full dedicated PCI
> bandwidth, one of the key benefits of the PCIe Point-to-Point
> infrastructure. This contrasts with  a traditional PCI bus system
> where the card would have to share the resources with cards in the
> other slots, and any on-board PCI controllers, such as SATA adaptors
> or Gigabit Ethernet, which can be quite bandwidth hungry.
> ////////////////

This is true.

> Seems like this could be an interesting solution for those suffering
> from graphics-card bus-contention with their soundcard.