Info about PCI Express

[Shadow walker]

Hi everyone, I'm looking for info about PCI Express.
More specifically I would like to know when it will be available and if it will affect the graphic card market much.
I know it's faster then AGP (about x13) but current graphic cards don't use all the available bandwidth with AGP, so I think it will just remove an obstacle (max bandwidth) that is not in the picture yet.
~Shadow

[Ioman]

From Tech Webs website:

"An advanced version of the PCI bus introduced in 2002. Rather than the shared, parallel bus structure of PCI, PCI Express provides a high-speed, switched architecture. Each PCI Express link is a serial communications channel made up of two differential wire pairs that provide 2.5 Gbits/sec in each direction. Up to 32 channels may be combined, creating a parallel interface of independently controlled serial links.

The bandwidth of the switch backplane determines the total capacity of a PCI Express implementation, which can dwarf the original 33MHz PCI bus. PCI Express can easily accommodate chip-to-chip transfers as well as Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Similar in architecture to InfiniBand, PCI Express is designed for internal connections, whereas InfiniBand provides a true fabric architecture for extending the connection via external networks.

Formerly known as "Third Generation I/O," or 3GIO, PCI Express is software compatible with PCI, although the slots and connectors are different. Products are expected in 2004."

I know that Nvidia and ATI already have announced PCI Express graphics cards, but I believe they were designed for workstations, not home computers. My guess is that we might see the first home PCI Express graphics adapters towards the end of the year.

Can anyone else shed some light on this?

[ECA]

Hmmm,
Why not a REAL parallel bus, insted of dealing with SERIAL, at ALL.
And considering the speed of the system anyway, WHY bother if the chipset cant keep up, YET?

[neuroking]

That's an easy one. Parallel = 2x's the copper = 2x's the heat, power. 2x's the possabilities of errors, and since this is an entire bus, I would think that cooling would play a much bigger role.

Besides, the cpu can only handle a couple instructions at a time.

I think we'll see a better designed bus architecture soon-ish. I think PCI Express is teh first bg step in a while, but a full blown solution is, I would say, 7-15 years off.

Brandon

[ECA]

Originally posted by neuroking
That's an easy one. Parallel = 2x's the copper = 2x's the heat, power. 2x's the possabilities of errors, and since this is an entire bus, I would think that cooling would play a much bigger role.

Besides, the cpu can only handle a couple instructions at a time.

I think we'll see a better designed bus architecture soon-ish. I think PCI Express is teh first bg step in a while, but a full blown solution is, I would say, 7-15 years off.

Brandon

And adding more lines for PCI serial is less?
We already changed over the AGP, why not the rest.
And if you look at the serial bus, it was designed long ago. it was designed around the idea that NOT all the cards are working all the time. Currently, that isnt true. And the speed is slowed because of it.
Doing this and making intelligent cards would be a great step. A video card that handled its own compression, and formats would be killer.

And you did hit on a point. But its been done long before now.
Just the companies didnt have the money to market, as well as MS/INTELL.

[neuroking]

Yeah, but it's easier to tweak rather than rebuild. I was taking it fromt eh perspective of how a company would actually implement a parallel bus. They wouldn't try to throw old design out the window (hell, some many mobos still have an ISA slot). So the marriage would involve some level of back compatability in it's earlier stages.

Love the idea on smart cards. Probably would require some sort of consortium to set standards and make sure cards play nice.

[ECA]

True,
something like IEEE group.
I really wouldnt mind the load up at start if they had to be loaded each time. It would increase the speed of the machine by 3x, just for video, as then MS wouldnt need to run the Codec in the background thru the CPU. And Audio would be the same with MP3,wmv,rm,.... codec on the card.

as for the old ISA slot, It would be nice to put a modem on it, as its a waste to put it on a PCI slot, its just NOT that fast. Its a serial card running at 56k, on a serial board with No cache.

One company long ago made a parrallel processed Net card, and it was 40% faster, as it had a Great cache, and accessed the cache to the CPU, and the card just dumped to the cache, and let it wait to be picked up. The system ran as fast as it could gather the cache.

Only thing is the Video and audio woild have to be sync'd thru the par procssor to link them, rather then the serial bus with gets Bogged down going back and forth.(it was done in the Amiga)

[Shadow walker]

Thanks for the info.

Does anyone know when will motherboards with PCI Express and PCI Express graphic cars become available for purchase?

Any estimation is welcome, 2 month, 6 month or whatever.