[Logistics]

What I have is an old P3TDEi if I recall correctly.  It's a dual-Tualatin board and I have two matched 1.4GHz Server CPU's for it.  It has a single PCI-X slot and USB 1.0 as well as dual-100base-TX.  Since the on-board video is absolutely unacceptable I want to put a new PCI video card in the system, but that means no internal sound-cards.
 
So I started looking into alternatives.  I know there are USB 1.0 sound cards (or USB to SPDIF devices for use on external stuff) so that's probably the easiest people can make suggestions on, but I also noticed there are professional devices which run over Ethernet, and I'm sure there were probably many devices which I didn't take an interest in over the years that run over Serial or Parrallel ports.
 
I only have an interest in 44kHz, stereo sound.  No surround-sound or 24-bit audio needs, here.
 
 
note:  I've searched endlessly for a PCI-X video card, but it seems the only thing that exists are imaging cards for professional use which are not fast for the likes of games or media, anyway and are prohibitively expensive.
 
 
-Logistics

 

[obobskivich]

I'm gonna save you some hassle: junk this machine.

PCI videocards are worthless for games, multimedia, etc - it's the bus not the chips. It doesn't have anywhere near enough bandwidth.

PCI-X (the newest, fastest generation) is quick enough, but nobody makes cards for it, because they don't sell. Matrox is probably your only option there, expect to spend THOUSANDS.

Audio via USB is your only option for expansion, and USB 1.0 is dog slow, so you'll get 16/44.1 and nothing else. Audio over Ethernet is a new one; what are you referencing?

And there's nothing via RS-232 or LPT - not enough bandwidth, by a mile.

Sounds like you have the remnants of an old rack server - powerful number cruncher (by 1999-2000 standards), but worthless for anything else (by 2002 and later standards).

If you don't want to do that, the Rage XL will be fine to draw a high-ish resolution single display under Windows 2000 or XP (forget Aero), no games, all media will be CPU bound, and throw a USB audio adapter onto it and have so-so audio performance. Again, I'd junk this thing, or sell it to some collector who's Tulatin crazy, and start over.

EDIT

You know, thinking about this further - if you're really married to this system, for whatever reason, you could throw the motherboard off a cliff and get one that doesn't suck. Finding AGP will be the hard part, but you can get boards with more expansion slots.

So now the question becomes:
What games and multimedia stuff beyond music do you want to do, and how many monitors do you need? It will help me make better suggestions.

Something like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tyan-Tiger-230T-S2507T-dual-socket-370-Motherboard-/160761334124?pt=Motherboards&hash=item256e1f496c

You'd have to add an AGP 4x card (still gonna be dog slow but miles ahead of PCI trash) and your PCI audio card. You'll spend like $400 or more on this and have indeterminate reliability. It'd be a fun project, but you can grab a brand new machine from Dell or HP which will outperform this by miles, and you can build your own that will outperform that (and have the rebuilding project fun). Economically this doesn't make sense.

 

[Logistics]

I don't need this system; it's not my main.  I'm just working with it for fun.  I like the fact that I can use modern devices to give it all the things it wasn't meant to have originally.  I just want it to run XP and use it for music and research.
 
Audio Over Ethernet is still in development.  There are many development kits around, but I haven't seen any simple, reasonably-priced devices which will accept digital out from your NIC.  Only commercial-class devices which cost in the four-digit range seem to exist at the moment so one of the many USB 1.0/1.1 devices will do the trick.