Why is PCI-X important?
PCI-X support is critical for overall server performance. In the ML150 G2, the PCI bus hosts all networking devices and PCI cards such as gigabit NICs or SCSI disk controllers. Moving from a 32-bit (as is still used in desktops) to the PCI-X bus quadruples the amount of data that can be transferred for a given unit of time. To achieve true gigabit NIC support (send & receive), at least a 64-bit PCI bus is required. When running multiple tasks in parallel, such as communicating with the network and writing to the SCSI drives, the higher bandwidth PCI-X bus reduces bottlenecking that can impact system performance.
