why PCI Express?

[silence]

ok...i am bit confused, i know it's good to have more bandwidth and PCI Express will bring it, but what will that change in gfx??if i am correct even AGPx8 doesn't get used to full extant.....so what's the big fuss about PCI Express?

[Grechie]

i hate the word pci grrr AGP sounds better

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by silence
ok...i am bit confused, i know it's good to have more bandwidth and PCI Express will bring it, but what will that change in gfx??if i am correct even AGPx8 doesn't get used to full extant.....so what's the big fuss about PCI Express?

Hm as i posted somewhere else, the main advantage is.

1) it has so much bandith that is DEDICATED (dosent share with other slots) it wont need to change for a LONG LONG TIME... no more (well is this card agp 2x 4x or 8x? 2.0 3.0???)

2) You will beable to put multiple (good) video cards in with no problem. (once you go dual monitors, you'll never go back) EX. Go to the store, buy 2 agp video cards of your choise, try to put them in.

3) Voodoo2 SLI anyone ; D

[R.Carter]

PCI Express is faster and the power will be 60 watts max. for PCI Express compared to 25 watts max. for AGP 8x.

AGP 8x has some big routing and layout issues that have to be dealt with and a very tight 1.875 ns timing budget. PCI Express should alleviate some of these problem and will most likely introduce some new "challenges" as well.

So its faster and allows for more power to the connector and should be easier (and so cheapter) to implement than AGP 8x.

[Dazz]

PCI Express is something like 4GB/sec unshared.

[Deimos]

Originally posted by Dazz
PCI Express is something like 4GB/sec unshared. Not quite.. PCI Express x 16 is exactly what you stated, but don't expect to many of those slots on a mainboard. Likely PCI Express x 1 will be more common for a while.

/Deimos

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by Deimos
Not quite.. PCI Express x 16 is exactly what you stated, but don't expect to many of those slots on a mainboard. Likely PCI Express x 1 will be more common for a while.

/Deimos

Huh? I thought that the X16 link was the graphics link for motherboards.

[Deimos]

Originally posted by R.Carter
Huh? I thought that the X16 link was the graphics link for motherboards. Yes and no. The 16x will be used for communication between the mainboard and the graphics-card, but only because it has enough available bandwidth. However, apart from the speed there really isn't a difference between the various PCI-express's 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 12x, 16x and 32x.

As such, expect network-card to be using x1-links and the next generation of graphicscars to use x16.

However, what really muddles the water is that PCI-X (as opposed to PCI Express) is not dead, and active development is still taking place. Last I checked PCI-X version 2 is due for release late next year, bringing with it some 8.5 GB/s of bandwidth.

/Deimos

[Dazz]

I belive PCI express will be for desktops while PCI-X is used for workstations.