PCI Express 3.0 Specs Delayed
According to PC Magazine, the PCI SIG (special interest group) has decided to officially delay the release of the finalized PCI Express 3.0 specification until Q2 2010. Originally, the specs were due to be released this year, with 3.0-enabled products to hit the shelves in 2010. Now, according to the new date, products compliant with the new specs won't be available until 2011.
The PCI SIG said that the delay stemmed from the need to maintain backward compatibility with products based on current standards, namely PCI Express 1.0 and 2.0. "In this particular case, with pushing the technology so hard, and with PCI gen 3 providing so much more capabilities but with the need to be still backwards-compatible, we had to do the diligence required to move the date," said Al Yanes, president of the PCI SIG.
Yanes added that a big portion of the delay was related to verifying products in the lab, making sure that the older devices can function correctly in the new 3.0 slots. The group is taking extra time to ensure that the three frequencies used by PCI Express--2.5 GHz, 5.0 GHz, and the new 8.0 GHz--can support the new encoding schemes (bumped up from 8-bit and 10-bit to 128-bit and 130-bit) on an electrical level.
Although graphics card manufacturers will be mostly affected by the delay, Yanes said that the member companies of the PCI SIG were satisfied with the group's decision.

I wanted USB 3.0, SATA III, and PCI-E 3.0 on my next motherboard upgrade but I don't think I can wait for 2 years.
Actually, it was expected next year. The spec would have been finalized this year, but products wouldn't hit the shelves until 2010.
yep. I can wait, besides, PCIE 16x and 16x 2.0 don't differ all that much anyways. usually just a couple of frames depending on the game. i'd think the same with 3.0
Yeah... it gets annoying...
I don't believe we're maxing out PCIe 1.0.
However, the higher bandwidth is good for crossfire (were you have less lanes meaning less bandwidth, actually hitting a cap).
PCIe 1 is still good enough for most people. I remember when the 8800GT came out boasting PCIe 2.0 but the reviews said it really needn't because it didn't come close to saturating PCIe 1.0.
Now with the likes of Radeon 4870x2 and Geforce GTX 295 PCIe must already come in handy. But we can probably wait another year before PCIe reaches it's limit, if it doesn't last even more than that (probably for the mainstream graphics card market it will last another two or three years).
Just my two cents.
video cards, probably not, but massive, server raid arrays likely could when the next gen of sata/sas appears (as far as i'm aware, pci-e raid cards are typically 8x and not 16x)
SATA I has hit peak (with SSDs)and same with PCI Express 1.1 (with GTX 295), just not 2.0.
While I am in the same boat as you and was looking forward to upgrading on FY-2010, my engineer's background says it is better to wait and hopefully get better hardware than to rush in and get something with design faults.
Agreed. Oddly, this article reminded me of an ancient PC problem with the i820, ASUS, the P3C2000 mainboard, and the MTH design problem that was rushed into production and later recalled by ASUS, who's customer service back then was worse than terrible.