Hey Jeff,
Thank you for taking the time to post this question to the forum. I would still pay attention to specifications as I have always found these specs to be in a question or two on the exam. I will say that the CompTIA exams are requiring more of the practical application of the technology for example
You are a tech at XYX Company and are helping deploy PCs with high definition output. You need to determine which cable to buy for the monitors. Which of the following accomplishes the goal:
1-VGA, Composite
2-HDMi
3-DisplayPort
4-RJ-45
In this example while the goal is understanding of the specifications i.e VGA= Analog, HDMi= Digital, DisplayPort= Digital, RJ-45= Networking, what is does not require is a knowledge of how many pins or even the shape of the connector. I will recommend paying attention to specs and the following might help with expansion cards:
PCI
- 32 Bit Bus but also implemented in two independant 32 bit buses
- Plug and Play
- 33 MHz
- 5 devices (10 devices if implementation is two 32 bit buses)
- Bus Mastering ( a single PCI device can take control of the PCI bus)
- Shared parallel communication
- 133 MBps transfer speed
PCI-X
- 64 bit bus
- 66 MHz
- 266 MBps
- Server-centric but it was not widely adopted
- Parallel communication
Mini-PCI
- Type I
- 100 pin stacking connector
- Type II
- 100 pin stacking connector
- Type III
PCIe
- 1-32 lanes bus width
- serial communications
- PCIe version 1.x
- 250 MBPs per lane
- 4 GBps total bandwidth (16 links/32 lanes)
- PCIe version 2.x
- 500 MBps per lane (x1)
- 8 GBps (x16)
- PCIe version 3.x
- 1 GBps (x1)
- 16 GBps (x16)
- PCIe version 4.x
- PnP support
Mini-PCIe
- 52 pin connector
- Supports USB 2.0 communications
- PnP support
ExpressCard
- successor to PC Card
- ExpressCard34
- ExpressCard54
- Speeds
- USB 2.0 Mode = 280 Mbps
- PCIe 1 mode= 1.6 Gbps
- PCIe 2 / USB 3 mode(s) = 3.2 Gbps
Legacy
ISA- Industry Standard Architecture
EISA- Extended ISA
AGP- Accelerated Graphic Port
AMR- Audio Modem Riser
CNR- Communications Networking Riser
I hope this helps with some of the concern over specification as well as specifics on common expansion cards. I put Legacy cards at the end for the sake of completeness but do not think they will be on the exam.
Best Regards,
Wes Bryan
Best Regards,
Wes Bryan
Knowledge is a road to be traveled upon, not a destination to be reached~~