Another PCI-E question

[dthayer]

So with someone (VIA) finally getting around to making a PCI Express board for AMD, I have a question about the differences between x16 and x8 PCI Express interfaces...

Is it just the bandwidth supplied to the card or is it the actual connector length? It says the K8T890Pro will have dual x8 connectors for graphics cards, but are all PCI-E cards on the market compatible with x8? Have any SLI benchmarks come out to even warrant wanting a dual PCI-E system? The thought of getting a mid-range card and then being able to upgrade for cheap to rival even the high end is just awesome

Thanks

 

[cleeve]

Don't upgrade to PCIE for game performance.

Games don't even saturate the 8x AGP slots yet. Hell, 90% of the time you can't see a difference between 8x AGP and 4x AGP.

It might become important if the Nvidia SLI (dual card in tandem) thing catches on, but that's a long way off yet...

If an 8x AGP card on an AthlonFX will beat an 8x AGP card on a high-end p4 system, that same 8x AGP card on a nice AthlonFX will still beat a PCIE card on a high end P4 system.
PCIE isn't a must have yet at all.

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[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Don't give him that advice I want more people with PCIe, BUY MORE PCIe, so that way more focus on new solutions.

Sure get the PCIe Celeron with an X300SE/PCX4300, gotta be better than an AGP x800xt/GF6800U.

<b>dthayer</b>, Cleeve's got it coveed well. Don't worry about PCIe unless you're building a LONG TERM rig, seriously the impact for this generation (and maybe next generation's) cards is not noticeable in gaming and regular applicaions. The ONLY place it makes a difference right now is for proffesional workstations, and that's because they do VERY specialized work geared to utilise the extra bandwidth on applications that are far more demanding than even Doom3.

There are 'some' advantages to PCIe, but they are mostly about elegance than performance, so not really what you're concerned about here.


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[dthayer]

Exactly, I'm going for the long term rig solution. I want to go with AMD as well so that's why I've waited (and am still waiting) on a board with PCI-E. It's less about the money upfront and more about the money down the road.

What I want most is to give myself a decent upgrade scenario instead of going for super high end now . Ideally if I can be ready for an SLI solution down the road (or if ATI comes up with something similar that requires two cards/slots) I'd like to be ready for it if at all possible. Can't exactly do that with an AGP slot even if they're going to stick around for a while.

I was also mostly curious about the actual, physical differences between x8 and x16. I saw some PCI-E cards are both, although most seem to be x8 which is good since the article on Tom's main site says VIA (or whoever implments the Pro solution) is going for that.