ISA or PCI?

[brandon184]

Which is better for a SBLIVE soundcard? An ISA slot or a PCI slot? Or does it even make a difference?

[Krueger81]

ISA is 8 Bit or 16 Bit, I believe and PCI is 32 Bit. For an example which one would you rather have a little Pinto 120 HP(ISA) or a Ferrari 570 HP(PCI) http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Krueger81

[jokostel]

isa puts a litle more load on the cpu....
pci relieves a little load BUT you have an extra irq port used for the "isa emulator"
since ALL sound and modem functions are still formed around the ISA bus.

[Rookie]

Does this logic also apply to pci modems?
quoted from jokostel:

isa puts a litle more load on the cpu....
pci relieves a little load BUT you have an extra irq port used for the "isa emulator"
since ALL sound and modem functions are still formed around the ISA bus.

How about cable modems? are they also isa?
Rookie

[Comtech]

Cable modems are external, and run off a NIC which is internal and can be ISA or PCI.
A modem connect of 56k is so slow compared to the speed of the BUS that you won't notice any difference between PCI and ISA.
Most ISA modems are "hard" modems, and most PCI modems are winmodems (soft).
With a sound card, get which ever card you want, and don't worry about which interface it uses, you won't notice any difference, except in some of the higher end games, in which case you definitely want a PCI sound card, 32bit or more.