PCI Express

The_B_Man

just wondering what peoples views are on this. apparently its gonna replace the AGP port with its 2.5GB/s transfer rate and could possibly spell an end the the whole "Northbridge/Southbridge" PC architecture by just having the single PCI-X controller in the middle!! and its meant to be coming out very soon! so everyones computers are gonna be nicely outdated as soon as they bought them!! nice! theres a bit about them on the intel site.

Actually, i wonder if pci-x will only come in on Intel hardware and not AMD?!?! i know its out already on MACs though.

weemcd

its the kinda thing always on the horison that stops me buying new equipment (that and no money like) but games currently dont use the full power of the cards on the market. its a constant battle to stay with whats on he market, one which im loosing currently, and then 64 bit or pci express comes out, /groan.

joePC

This type of development is great but will be overkill for most users..........

uberpixie

Not worried about it myself. The first generation of PCI express gfx cards wont be much faster than whats on the market already.

Remember AGP when it first came out or AGP x 2? The first generation won't be too much of a speed jump, the second or third generation is when we will most likely see a decent performance increase.

It always takes the manufacturers a gen or two to get things right, so i prob won't be running out to get a pci express mobo as soon as they come out. A gen or two after that though I will , it will be worth it by then.

The_B_Man

the 1st generation of boards are gonna support AGP anyway. i dont see how they can utilize the full bandwidth of 2.5 jiggly-bits/s anyway, apart from graphics! like wat are u gonna need that much on audio for? theres comes a limit where the human ear can only hear to a certain quality and anything after that is just showin off!
Theres a lot off talk about network monitoring cards and stuff usin PCI-X, which i suppose is reasonable since network/internet speeds can only do nothing but increase in speed/bandwidth etc so as to necessitate an increase in speed for monitoring tools using PCI-X! however, most net admins have sed they wont move to PCI-X as they dont see much of a benefit!
Personally, if it surpasses AGP 8x then its good as looks are all too much important these days and it transcends to PC UI's, ie the fancier the screen, the better, which is why windows is more popular than the more stable linux etc.

The average home user can only benefit from it, it my opinion. it will remove the whole "do i have AGP on my mobo or not, and if so, is it AGP 8x?" question. if theres only 1 type of slot on a mobo, then less computer illiterate ppl can benefit when upgrading! it simplifies the mobo somewhat and as it eliminates the "NorthBridge/SouthBridge" architecture, PCs are gonna be a lot easier to upgrade and maintain. although, in the future, PCsa re gonna be so fast that nobody is gonna give a rats ass about a cupla GHz performance increase!!!

HL2 and Doom 3 will just be distant memories and blocky old games etc...

roll on the future of....eh....stuff???

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by The_B_Man
Theres a lot off talk about network monitoring cards and stuff usin PCI-X

It's not called PCI-X it's PCI-Express, PCI-X is for servers and will never be a consumer item - it's cost being far too high; PCI-X and PCI-Express are two different standards.

Originally posted by The_B_Man
The average home user can only benefit from it, it my opinion. it will remove the whole "do i have AGP on my mobo or not, and if so, is it AGP 8x?" question. if theres only 1 type of slot on a mobo

Nope there will still be different types of PCI-Express slots 1X, 4X, 8X, 16X. 16X will be the highest in terms of bandwidth and therefore Gfx cards will use this one most other cards will use 1X as there is plenty of bandwidth on it, certain network interfaces will use the 4X and 8X speeds as we look beyond 1Gb/s in network connections (10Gb/s). AMD will fully support it.

weemcd

sounds like something i and alot of other people simply do not need

po0k

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
It's not called PCI-X it's PCI-Express, PCI-X is for servers and will never be a consumer item - it's cost being far too high; PCI-X and PCI-Express are two different standards.



Nope there will still be different types of PCI-Express slots 1X, 4X, 8X, 16X. 16X will be the highest in terms of bandwidth and therefore Gfx cards will use this one most other cards will use 1X as there is plenty of bandwidth on it, certain network interfaces will use the 4X and 8X speeds as we look beyond 1Gb/s in network connections (10Gb/s). AMD will fully support it.

PCI-X is 133Mhz 64-bit bus. Basicly current PCI on steroids with a few extra features. Afaik backwardsly compatible with PCi2.3 cards.

PCI-Express does have the different types of slots, but they're not of varying speeds afaik, more like "lanes"
the 16x has 16 of these lanes (I think they're 8/16/32bits wide each - not sure though, been a while since I read up on it).
The more lanes you dedicate to a given device the more bandwidth it has.
I assume boards will have 1x16lane, maybe 1-2x8lane and the rest 4lane, which 1x can plug into aswell...

Course, with alot of stuff being moved to onboard, you won't really have to worry about the slots, the kit will be hardwired into the "ports"/board's architecture already.
I/O add-in cards will be one thing to seriously benefit from this interface ie sATA RAID cards with 5-8 channels.
10GigEthernet would also be another, but you won't see that on the consumer desktop for another 3-5 years.

Things will get very interesting in the next 6-9 months.
2005 will see us with sata raid arrays of multiple hundred gigs, x86 with 64-bit extensions (either AMD or Intel), DDR2/XDR in multiple channels, the post GeForcefx 5950/Radeon 9800XT generation of graphics processors (the cycles are slowing down in graphics, expect each solid gen to last about 9-12 months instead of 6), dual onboard NICs, high-quality 7.1 channel surround sound onboard and some serious integration of system monitoring and management software into the motherboards. Watercooling will also become a fair bit more common.
I wouldn't be surprised if Dell started shipping the high-end kit with watercooling in the next 12 months, if not in the server market, then in the workstation.

po0k

http://www.pcisig.com/
someone read up on that, I haven't had the time lately and I've got to take a shower now.
Point out anywhere i'm wrong in the previous post please.

dazberry

Slightly OT (but in the spirit of the thread I think) is not only the adoption of PCI-Express and the like, but the proposed migration of the ATX form factor to (wait for it...) BTX.

Check out http://www.formfactors.org/ for the new specification.

D.

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by weemcd
sounds like something i and alot of other people simply do not need

That is simply wrong it's one of the major areas of the PC which hasn't been upgraded for *many* years it's still running at 33Mhz for Gods sake how pathetic is that!. I/O is the one area that is a huge bottleneck in modern PCs and I for one welcome our faster PCI-Express overlords!:D.

BigEejit

As has been quite rightly pointed out the PCI standard is one of the slowest things in the computer these days ... a major reason for me getting a Abit IC7-G was for the ethernet port that is not connected to the shagging PCI bus ... cant have much of a serious games machine if cards are fighting for a limited resource

dazberry

Originally posted by BigEejit
a major reason for me getting a Abit IC7-G was for the ethernet port that is not connected to the shagging PCI bus ... cant have much of a serious games machine if cards are fighting for a limited resource

Are you sure that your ethernet port is not on the PCI bus? Just because something is onboard does not mean that its not talking to the system via the PCI Bus.

D.

BigEejit

Originally posted by dazberry
Are you sure that your ethernet port is not on the PCI bus? Just because something is onboard does not mean that its not talking to the system via the PCI Bus.

D.

Ya ... it was aggresively advertised at the time ... the intel 875p chipset uses a Communications Streaming Architecture(CSA) ... which takes that traffic from the northbridge directly (well, through a gigabit ethernet chip), not from the southbridge which controls the pci bus and ide etc.

A quote from a intel pdf: http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/designex/25252703.pdf

The MCH is designed for use with a single UP capable processor in the 478-pin package. The role of the MCH is to arbitrate the flow of information between the five system interfaces: system bus (FSB), system memory, AGP, Hub Interface, and CSA interface. The MCH and ICH5 are interconnected via an Intel proprietary interface called the “hub interface.” The CSA interface connects the MCH with the 82541EI Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) controller. The CSA Interface runs at 266 MT/s (with 66 MHz base clock) and uses 1.5 V signaling.

The ICH (for IDE interface, PCI bus etc) aka southbridge, can support lan as well, but that may intefere with PCI max speed:

The ICH5 incorporates an integrated LAN Controller. Its bus master capabilities enable the component to process high-level commands and perform multiple operations that lowers processor utilization by off-loading communication tasks from the processor.
The ICH5 supports several components depending on the target market. Available LAN components include the Intel 82562ET/82562EZ for basic Ethernet 10/100 connection, Intel 82562EM/82562EX component that provides an Ethernet 10/100 connection with the added manageability capabilities, Intel® 82540EM GbE controller, and Intel® 82551QM Fast Ethernet controller.