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PCI Express 2.0 Due By Year's End
extremetech.com — The final basic version of PCI Express 2.0, an update to the high-speed peripheral interconnect introduced in 2002, is just months away. On Monday, the special interest group that owns and manages PCI specifications announced the release of candidate revision 0.9 to its members for a final evaluation.
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- Ganpachi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6
Question: will older graphics cards benefit from the doubled bit rate?- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Answer: No. Current graphics cards have not reached saturation of 16x PCI Express slots, but with the next generation looming, continuous development of interconnects is necessary to stay ahead of the curve. (Nobody thought AGP 8x would reach saturation as quickly as it did either, if you remember how quickly that was phased out in favor of PCI Express).
- mooninite, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18"(Nobody thought AGP 8x would reach saturation as quickly as it did either,"
It didn't reach saturation genius. There are numerous tests between AGP 4x and 8x showing no performance difference between the two. PCI Express is technically faster, yes, but is it being utilized? No. - Whitey04, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10What I really want is the PCI-E 1x/2x/4x slots. Where are they? Where is my PCI-E audio card, TV card, desktop RAID???
- foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3what? pci, pci 2.2, pci-x, and even pci-e weren't enough for you? :P
- kamikazecow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Omfg... Im still on agp. Now its PCI-X 2.0? I suppose DX10 will have hybrid cards like the geforce 6XXX serries with agp/pci-x 1.0? Any thoughts?
- OMGWTFROFLMAO, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Me too, I was planning on upgrading to PCI-E near the end of this year, but *****.. I'll just wait until mid 2007 before upgrading. I'm going to need a new MOBO, Video Card, AND processor now. That is going to be a good $400-$600, and that's on the low end.
- tpv2066, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Doubtful, that AGP will be grandfathered into dx10. Most cards come out PCI-Express now.
Also, as an FYI Kamikazecow, PCI-X is not equivalent to PCI Express.
PCI-X is used mostly on servers as an expanded lane width for PCI buses and does not have 1/2 of the bandwith a pci-express 16x does - kmenzel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@kamikazecow
PCI-X isn't PCI express (PCI-E) - PCI-X is an extension of the original PCI that changes the bus speed, and is generally backwards compatible with PCI. PCI-X 2.0 came out in 2003.
I am very glad that PCI-E 2 is going to be backwards compatible with PCI-E 1 devices though as I'm about to pick up a rather expensive PCI-E raid card...
edit: and now everything i've said is redundant.
- miceliux, on 10/12/2007, -10/+0more and more updates, is there no end?
- Punisher2K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Obviously no.
- JohnBonham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0intel and amd are lauching quad core procs and not even a year has gone since the launch of dual cores. hey wait, i see an eightcore proc just around the corner. so the answer is no, technology will never stop updating.
look like they plan on multiplying cores by 2. imagine 10 years later. a proc with 1024 cores??
- geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This will also be great for RAID arrays. Already PCI-e RAID cards are top of the line.
"In addition to connecting with plug-in slots, the PCI Express Cable specification will allow PCI devices to connect using copper cables as long as 10 meters long, and with data transfer speeds of 2.5 Gbits/s per line." - teqonix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, will this be the same scenario as it was for AGP 8x? Almost all graphics cards that supported AGP 8x also worked with AGP4x slots, right?
I really don't feel like upgrading my motherboard again right after switching from AGP. - caseycoold, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14I'm glad I stuck with AGP a little bit longer. Now I can just skip PCI-express 1 all together.
- DogzOfWar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm with you, man. I have a GeForce Ti4200 that's nearly 3 years old. I've been trying to plan an upgrade for the past few months, trying to find some decent way to not have to get a new mobo, CPU, ram and video card (plus maybe a power supply?) all at once.
It's almost infuriating the way they keep changing the slots and standards. My Athlon 64 is a 754 pin. In the meantime, 939 has come along and already been phased out in favor of AM2, and now i'm reading about the replacements for that!
It's impossible (and sad) that you can't build a machine that will last more than a few years, without having to replace nearly everything. - PhantomZmoove, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The big problem that I have with this whole AGP/PCI express deal is is seems like they are trying to force us out of AGP. While shopping for my last video card (6600GT) I noticed the benchmarks were the same for the AGP and PCI express models. Well, I looked in the 7600GT and (for the brief moment that I could find AGP versions of it) they were the same again.
So here we are looking at generation three of PCI express. Is this going to be the one that makes it worth it to move? (you know, other than being forced into it since you can't buy decent AGP cards anymore) - PayneX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Works out well for the Dells.
- JohnBonham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0maybe the agp version is more expensive... and correct me if i'm wrong but i think theres no such thing as agp cards in SLI or Crossfire.
- DogzOfWar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm with you, man. I have a GeForce Ti4200 that's nearly 3 years old. I've been trying to plan an upgrade for the past few months, trying to find some decent way to not have to get a new mobo, CPU, ram and video card (plus maybe a power supply?) all at once.
- OpCzar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Is there any other group that benefits from this other than pc gamers? I have yet to upgrade from my X850 Pro AGP but find that more and more, games tend to be console oriented. One has to upgrade a lot to compensate for the lack of a uniform/well maintained platform.
- idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Servers. They need high-speed cards for RAID arrays, NICs, and such.
- dtay2827, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The article says that we won't see the technology implemented in any motherboards or video cards until 2007. That is sad. Although current cards can't use the bandwidth the option to use an extention cable is interesting. I wonder if we will see external video cards laptops on a wider scale. Any thoughts?
- charro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I would expect the 'backwards' functionality to go from a PCI-E2 card into a PCI-E1 slot.
/crap, this reply is meant for the following comment @Xanium4332
- charro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I would expect the 'backwards' functionality to go from a PCI-E2 card into a PCI-E1 slot.
- Xanium4332, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3When they say, 'backwards compatable', do they mean that PCI-E 1 gfx cards will work in PCI-E 2 slots, or PCI-E 2 gfx cards will work in PCI-E 1 slots?
- ohnoess, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0,.,.,
- SyDIGG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3With the way things are going, upgrading your machines becomes less of an option. If I want to upgrade now, I have to replace my motherboard, video card, psu, ram, hard drives, etc. Can we say a new pc? About the only thing I can reuse is the case and my pci audio card, I guess I could use my ide hard drives for mass storage.
- fearlessfrog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Same here.
Apart from I'll need a new form factor case.
Oh, and hard-drives IDE aren't ideal compared to S/P ATA.
My mouse mat is now my official upgrade path... - dooraque, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6IDE *is* P-ATA you wizard
- fearlessfrog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Same here.
- ArkAngel06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3So by reading the last sentence, it looks like the PCI-Express 2.0 cards will work in current PCI-Express slots, it just limits the transfer rates down to 2.5gb/s. Meaning you can buy a 2.0 card and use it until you get a 2.0 PCI-Express motherboard.
Right? - Highstand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How interesting. Especially since I just bought a new mobo and videocard LAST FREAKING WEEK! Stupid question for everyone. Why do they come out with all of these incremental changes? Just make a big leap in the technology . I'm tired of all these baby steps whose only purpose is to get me to spend more money.
- dooraque, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2They only get you to spend more money if you are willing to, you wizard
- whisperedlie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2don't worry, PCI-E will be fine for quite some time, most likely by the time you do your next upgrade.
@dooraque
ok, the "you wizard" horse was beaten to death *before* you managed to use it twice in the same article comments. move along. - PayneX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Dooraque is "wizard" your word of the day?...you wizard.
- ArkAngel06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just bought my new parts for a new system last night...But I dont care, you have to pick a time to upgrade, if you are always waiting for the new stuff to come out, you will never be able to build a computer, because thats always.
- musntSurfatWork, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I paid $699 for an ISA ATI Expression once. FF 10 years, boy do I feel like a ***** idiot consumer. 10 years from now, we will be lavishing in our 50 core desktops with unlimited organic ram and usb enabled children.
I say PCI 2.0...who cares anymore. - biohazd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What the article fails to state is that the new standard includes hardware virtualization, this would mean you could run two or more operating systems side by side on the same system and both would have direct access to the graphics hardware in order to run hardware accelerated visuals i.e. Vista's Aero and GNU/Linux's AIGLX, not to mention 3D accelerated games.
- JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How about a faster DDRdrive?
- JohnBonham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0with DirectX10 game developers will make their games very detaied and because of that video card manufacturers will have to make better cards to meet future games' requirements.
i mean, pci express launched in 2004, and lots of powerful games were made just a few months after the release.
By the way, this article is inaccurate. it says pci express was launched in 2002.
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