🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <7buekv$ik4$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>,
Mark W Brehob  <brehob@cse.msu.edu> wrote:
>:    Remember, in consoles, they can design nice fat busses to shovel
>: around more data, while PCs tend to be more limited in their memory
>: i/o setups due to compatability reasons. 

>I can't understand why a PC would be limited in i/o setups for anything 
>involving compatability.  Could you give an example?  

   Easy: slots (ISA, PCI, AGP, etc) have a fixed bit width throughout
their lifetime. However, video boards based on them have upped their
internal bandwidths over time-- 64 and 128 bit internal pathways on
video boards are quite common these days. If you've got a 64 bit card
on a 32 bit PCI slot, wouldn't it be better to redesign the PCI to be
64 bits as well for a better pathway to system RAM? Oops, can't do
that. Want to make a new PCI card that talks to the motherboard at
50Mhz rather than 33Mhz? Oops, can't do that.

   On a console, you don't have these issues-- the designers pick the
bus width and speed upfront to best balance performance, cost, and the
like. They're not limited to PCI/ISA/AGP or whatever bus their last
console had; they could pick a 48-bit wide bus running at 78.2Mhz if
they wanted. 

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates - personal webpage http://www.visi.com/~nathan/  
# Network Programmer, Battlezone 2: see http://www.pandemicstudios.com
# NOT speaking for Pandemic Studios or Activision, ONLY myself
# "What are the facts, and to how many decimal places?" -R.A. Heinlein