What is this "PCI express" thing?

[Pccomputerdr]

Is this a new PCI technology not specifically designed for AGP slot, but for
all other components such as "sound card", "ethnernet card" that delivers
faster buss-speed than that of AGP 8X?

If that's the case, is it wrong to assume that all sound and ethernet cards
have to be re-desinged to take advantage of this new PCI express technology?
Since PCI express provides faster buss-speed than that of AGP 8X, would it be
accurate to assume that AGP video cards might be obsolete, if not this or next
year, some time in future when this PCI express becomes more common and stable?

Thanks…

 

[Jay Michaels]

Is this a new PCI technology not specifically designed for AGP slot, but for
all other components such as "sound card", "ethnernet card" that delivers
faster buss-speed than that of AGP 8X?

If that's the case, is it wrong to assume that all sound and ethernet cards
have to be re-desinged to take advantage of this new PCI express

technology?

From what I've, read old cards will still work in the new slot.

 

[johns]

year, some time in future when this PCI express becomes more common and

stable?

It is already happening .. SATA, etc .. I suspect that
for a while there will be combo mobos that do both
while we evaluate the new stuff. Personally, I wish
somebody out there would greatly expand on the
on-board video. Right now, it is pretty good for general
office and professional work ... and extremely cost
effective as compared to buying every item separately.
On board sound is fine .. ethernet is fine ... good IO
if fine and getting even better .. so why not video? It is
not like video is just an afterthough either. I would like
to see a super-good multimedia mobo that is quiet,
has great gaming video, and is small. To heck with all
those slots .. maybe two. Do the entire thing for $130
and slide it into the back of a high resolution flat panel
video screen about a yard wide ... and I'm not talking
about another half-baked Apple either.

johns

 

[Pccomputerdr]

This is a new technology on the horizon. Since ATI is in competition with
Nvidia, I am sure ATI will be in race to rush the new technology out. As long
as the PCI-express performance is proved to be better and more promising than
that of old AGP technology, I don't think it will take years for this new
technology to catch on. As a matter of fact, in 9 months or so, it may be
possible to see video cards with PCI-express technology taking over.

Having said that, I, for one, would not pay $500 for the latest ATI AGP video
card, assuming that ATI will surely come out with better and faster version of
PCI-express video cards in very near future.

 

[First of One]

Is this a new PCI technology not specifically designed for AGP slot, but for
all other components such as "sound card", "ethnernet card" that delivers
faster buss-speed than that of AGP 8X?

Yes and no. PCI-express is scalable, so motherboards will have full-length
slots for video card(s) and gigabit Ethernet cards, and quarter-length slots
for puny things like sound cards. The full-length slots offer greater data
transfer rates than AGP8x. Performance-wise, though, AGP8x provides zero
speed over AGP4x in games, so PCIe won't provide anything extra.

If that's the case, is it wrong to assume that all sound and ethernet cards
have to be re-desinged to take advantage of this new PCI express

technology?

Redesigned, or simply with a bridge chip added (like nVidia does) so the old
design can function on the PCIe bus. In any case, your existing AGP and PCI
cards won't physically fit in PCIe slots.

Since PCI express provides faster buss-speed than that of AGP 8X, would it be
accurate to assume that AGP video cards might be obsolete, if not this or next
year, some time in future when this PCI express becomes more common and

stable?

Hard to say on this one.

 

[Geoff]

Is this a new PCI technology not specifically designed for AGP slot,
but for all other components such as "sound card", "ethnernet card"
that delivers faster buss-speed than that of AGP 8X?

If that's the case, is it wrong to assume that all sound and ethernet
cards have to be re-desinged to take advantage of this new PCI
express technology? Since PCI express provides faster buss-speed than
that of AGP 8X, would it be accurate to assume that AGP video cards
might be obsolete, if not this or next year, some time in future when
this PCI express becomes more common and stable?

Thanks.

once upon a time we had this thing called the isa bus, it was replaced by
the pci bus, which is replaced the the pci express bus

agp was only made because the pci was limiting, the pci bus is well and
truly dated now, caompanys have been making hacks and patchs for it for a
while now, hypertransport and such

you will see motherboards with both pci e slots, old pci slots and agp slots
too i would think
like in the old days with pci and isa

 

[William]

Is this a new PCI technology not specifically designed for AGP slot, but for
all other components such as "sound card", "ethnernet card" that delivers
faster buss-speed than that of AGP 8X?

If that's the case, is it wrong to assume that all sound and ethernet cards
have to be re-desinged to take advantage of this new PCI express technology?
Since PCI express provides faster buss-speed than that of AGP 8X, would it be
accurate to assume that AGP video cards might be obsolete, if not this or next
year, some time in future when this PCI express becomes more common and stable?

Thanks.

Just got a new Dell and it has an ATI PCI express video card. Its the low
end one X300 series. Dell has them also up to the X800 for $$$ more . I use
Flight Sim mostly and I can tell you the PCI card is much better and
smoother than the 9600XT I had in my old system. The card is for sale by the
way

From the little I know on the subject PCI express has faster bandwidth up to
16X whereas AGP is 8X. I am still reading up on it.

Bill

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

Yes and no. PCI-express is scalable, so motherboards will have full-length
slots for video card(s) and gigabit Ethernet cards, and quarter-length slots
for puny things like sound cards. The full-length slots offer greater data
transfer rates than AGP8x. Performance-wise, though, AGP8x provides zero
speed over AGP4x in games, so PCIe won't provide anything extra.

That's an interesting fact. Where then is the current bottleneck in
gaming?

 

[johns]

Look at the new Dells. I don't really get the impression
that PCI express is so much a biggie, as affordable. That
could change of course, but Dell is pushing imbedded
video. Right now, I have no idea what its value really
is .. especially in this day of smaller cheaper specialized
appliances. One thing for sure ... if anybody out there is
running a print *server* instead of a print server
*appliance*, they are throwing away both money and
reliability.

johns

 

[Ben Pope]

That's an interesting fact. Where then is the current bottleneck in
gaming?

I didn't see the first post, so I'll make general comments here.

PCI express does for PCI what SATA did for ATA (IDE), and what USB did for
serial (RS232) ports.

It's a high speed serial link based on a differential pair.

AGP is effectively an entire PCI bus with one slot on it to improve
bandwidth for the video card. The PCI bus can be easily saturated with a
PCI gigabit Ethernet controller, or a PCI RAID controller (probably 3 disks
required though, really).

PCI-Express just takes that further... whereas PCI has limits and AGP will
find limits at some point, PCI-E will hopefully get rid of the two slightly
different technologies, combining them into one and allowing much greater
headroom without keep breaking compatibility like the various AGP standards
have done.

Since it's a serial technology, not a parallel one, board layout is much
simplified and will hopefully aid the transition to the BTX form factor.

Thats my basic understanding of it, anyway.

In light of PCI-E, PCI-X will be a waste of space. It's like a DDR PCI bus.
It's a temporary stop-gap, it's only saving grace is that it's completely
backwards compatible with PCI. However, there are already too many bloody
standards and technologies. If PCI-X never gets to consumer boards it'll be
a good thing, as it means that PCI-E uptake will be quicker.

PCI-Express is somewhat compatible with PCI, the physical layer is obviously
different, so expect to see adaptors for existing PCI cards to PCI-express,
although this could easily be done on the motherboard - this is where PCI-X
could be used.

I can imagine a system where you have the parallel link from the chipset out
to the first slot (PCI-E 8x) then the second slot (maybe PCI-E 4x) then
maybe a couple of PCI-E 1x slots and then a bridge chip taking it out to a
parallel interface and whack a couple of PCI-X slots in for backwards
compatibility. That would be the best solution all round for a new gen
motherboard.

The general shift from parallel to serial technologies for peripherals is a
good thing. If you look closely at motherboards you will see that it's an
absolute nightmare trying to route all the bloody lanes! Hypertransport,
USB, SATA, PCI-Espress and other (serial, differential pair) technologies,
should, in theory make boards cheaper and easier to produce... and since
it's all so much easier to route, the BTX form factor allows a much more
sensible case layout as well.

Cool, that was the first time I'd thought about the standards in any detail,
so I guess I learnt (or made up) a lot

There's a lot happening at the moment. It should all be for the better.

Current bottleneck in gaming? Maybe CPU, maybe memory bandwidth, probably
GPU - depending on the game. You tend to find that the various buses and
other transmission systems get upgraded before they get saturated. PCI was
a bit late really.

Ben

 

[DaveW]

AGP will be gone in a year or two due to the superiority of PCI Express.

 

[Ben Pope]

I can imagine a system where you have the parallel link from the chipset

I meant serial, of course!

Ben

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

I didn't see the first post, so I'll make general comments here.

PCI express does for PCI what SATA did for ATA (IDE), and what USB did for
serial (RS232) ports.

Ben, the original post was right above my comment, and it's there again in
this post at the top.

The poster is saying that games are not bottlenecked on the video bus. As
evidence of this, he points out that going from AGP 4x to AGP 8x does not
increase gaming performance. The obvious implication is that PCI Express
for video is not necessary because there is no bottleneck on the bus that
needs fixing.

Note I wonder does this situation change radically if you have two monitors
hooked up for simultaneous use during gaming. Does the situation change if
you game at very high resolutions, like 2048x1536? Maybe the situation
will change for cards like ATI FireGL V7100 that have quad monitor support
at 1600x1200 per monitor? It would be good if someone had published some
data on this.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Re: "Is this a new PCI technology not specifically designed for AGP
slot, but for all other components such as "sound card", "ethnernet
card" ..."

Yes, that's correct. It will be for EVERYTHING. Within about 2 years,
motherboards won't have ANY "PCI" slots OR "AGP" slots, they will only
have PCI Express slots, which will be used for all internal peripherals
(except any that use USB or Firewire).

All existing cards will be obsolete, just like "ISA Cards" from the
PC-AT era.

Probably about 2 years.

 

[Ben Pope]

Ben, the original post was right above my comment, and it's there again in
this post at the top.

I know, I was just saying that my rant was supposed to be directed at the
original post. Most of it was irrelevant to the original post anyway, but
my point was that busses tend to get upgraded before they get saturated, and
that there are other reasons to change to PCI-Express other than speed.
Current boards have multiple "PCI" busses and this increases board
complexity. PCI-Express will reduce that complexity considerably.

The poster is saying that games are not bottlenecked on the video bus.
As evidence of this, he points out that going from AGP 4x to AGP 8x does
not increase gaming performance. The obvious implication is that PCI
Express for video is not necessary because there is no bottleneck on the
bus that needs fixing.

Which is what I said. But if you were to take everything back to one bus
(what PCI-E is going to do), then only PCI-E would cope with it all.

Note I wonder does this situation change radically if you have two
monitors hooked up for simultaneous use during gaming.

Not really, see below:

Does the
situation change if you game at very high resolutions, like 2048x1536?

Given the amount of T&L and other stuff that GPUs do now, I suspect that
they receive about the same data no matter what res they run at. Hence all
the extra processing is on the card.

Maybe the situation will change for cards like ATI FireGL V7100 that have
quad monitor support at 1600x1200 per monitor? It would be good if
someone had published some data on this.

Again, pretty unlikely.

Back when the CPU was calculating all the 3D data (transform), and sending
the data to the GPU to stick textures and the like on, it would have made a
huge difference as you are increasing the number of points. Now that the
CPU doesn't do any of that, there is no data transfers whose quantity is
anything like linearly related to number of polygons, resolution etc. At
least, not DURING game play when bandwidth actually matters.

Ben

 

[@ndrew]

Just got a new Dell and it has an ATI PCI express video card. Its the
low end one X300 series. Dell has them also up to the X800 for $$$
more . I use Flight Sim mostly and I can tell you the PCI card is
much better and smoother than the 9600XT I had in my old system. The
card is for sale by the way

From the little I know on the subject PCI express has faster
bandwidth up to 16X whereas AGP is 8X. I am still reading up on it.

You are imagining this .. unless a game is optimised for 16X you will
have no current ebenfit from PCI - E. In other words the new adopters
are getting no benefit from current games. This is not to say that
things won't change .. but at the moment waste of space.

regards

@ndrew

 

[Ben Pope]

AGP will be gone in a year or two due to the superiority of PCI Express.

Does your current motherboard have a serial port on it? Well USB should
have replaced it by now, USB was introduced around 8 years ago?. Many
laptops have finally gotten rid of legacy ports in the last few months.

Hopefully AGP will be gone in a couple of years, just saying that "legacy"
hardware can stick around for a surprisingly long time. Only time will
tell.

Ben

 

[William]

You are imagining this .. unless a game is optimised for 16X you will
have no current ebenfit from PCI - E. In other words the new adopters
are getting no benefit from current games. This is not to say that
things won't change .. but at the moment waste of space.

regards

@ndrew

Well I hope my imagination never stops...!

 

[@ndrew]

Well I hope my imagination never stops...!

I hope so too ... just for interest sake .. benchmark it and post the
results.

regards

@ndrew

 

[William]

I hope so too ... just for interest sake .. benchmark it and post the
results.

regards

@ndrew

Dont know how to do that. Never been into that kind of stuff as I only use
Flight Sim and only interested in how it performs for me. But like you said
I always read where this, that and the other wont have an effect since
software isnt optimized to use "X", but without a doubt this sim now flies
much better than before. Very smooth

Bill