What the heck is PCIe

[warbelsnap]

Im getting back into computers after a very long vacation!!! (Back when 2X AGP arrived). Ive been seeing post and replies about something called PCI e. Where can I go on the net to find an explanation on how this works and what this is. And what ever happened to AGP??

If you can be a good example..........be a very bad warning!

 

[lotrtrotk]

AGP is still around. I don't think any AMD motherboards have support for PCIe yet. PCIe is still pretty pricy because it is the new thing.... but it may not be too long (at least a year though) before PCIe is the standard.

Other than that, I don't know a whole lot about it.

 

[sweatlaserxp]

Just Google it and you'll find plenty of info. x16 PCIe is replacing AGP; Intel already supports it and AMD has nForce4 on the way.

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[pauldh]

So you basically missed AGP 4X and 8X, as well as the intro to PCI-express.

<A HREF="http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040310/index.html" target="_new">THG has an article</A> that can help catch you up. PCI-e isn't offering faster performance now, but will down the road when the cards are faster or SLI (using dual cards) becomes a reality. But it is still a consideration to think about now because the way it looks, the current X800XTpe and GF6800U just may be the fastest AGP cards made. Unfortunately, the next generation of high end cards may ONLY come in PCI-e.

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[Crashman]

PCIe (PCI-Express) is serial PCI. Many new boards use it. It can come in several widths (x1, x4, x8, x16), where x1 replaces a standard PCI slot and x16 replaces AGP8x.

x1 has nearly 2x the transfer rate of older PCI slots in one direction, and it's full duplex so you get nearly 4x the transfer rate bi-directionally (important for hard drive and network controllers mainly).

x16 has nearly 2x the transfer rate of AGP8x, but because it's also full-duplex it also has a peak bi-directional transfer rate nearly 4x that of AGP8x.

x4 and x8 speeds will be used mainly for server hardware.

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