Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions Questions Related to Specific Gage Products Can't Find an Answer?

Q. How fast can I transfer data from my CompuScope card's on-board memory to PC memory over the PCI bus?

A. PCI can burst data across the bus at 132 MB/s, since PCI is a 32 bit bus running at 33 MHz.

However, it must be noted that this is the burst transfer rate, which can be maintained for short bursts of up to about 1 KByte at a time. The sustained transfer rate over a long period of time is not the same: it depends upon the PCI chipset being used on the motherboard or CPU card, the latency timer of the bus master which has been granted the bus, and other peripheral devices on the motherboard. No PCI device is allowed to own the bus for more than 248 clock cycles, which is the maximum value of the latency timer. The device must relinquish and re-request ownership of the bus when this timer expires, thereby guaranteeing that other potential bus masters have access to the bus. This is achieved at the expense of marginally lower sustained transfer rates.

Gage guarantees a sustained data transfer rate of 100 MB/s on motherboards and CPU cards with Intel chipsets. Examples of such motherboards are the Intel TC430 HX motherboard and the GageCPU 586 CPU Card.

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