How much longer will videocards support the PCI slot?

[PeeluckyDuckee]

Will the support drop in future cards? Wil the NV30 come out in PCI format? Or at least a lesser power version of the NV30? What about ATI's latest 9xxx?

 

[spanky]

hercules makes a radeon 9000 in the pci flavor

 

[aircooled]

It'll end soon.
Even older motherboards support AGP now. I assume that there will be 3rd party companies making PCI boards for a bit, but most all modern mobo's support AGP, so there is no reason for video card manufactures to keep supporting PCI for too much longer...

 

[sechs]

With the hardware manufacturers preparing to replace both PCI and AGP with a new interconnect standard, I'd expect next year to be the last year that new GPUs will make their way onto PCI cards in quantity from reputable companies.

There will continue to be PCI video cards, but nothing particularly faster or better than what we have now.

 

[Viper96720]

Long if PCI-X is considered PCI if that's the new standard

 

[ctk1981]

I agree with viper there. It was already stated in a few articles that if/when they make the move to PCI-X, graphics cards would move to that standard. How fast will it happen, who knows? I heard PCI-X was going ot be in 2004 or so. Then we'll see how long it takes graphics cards makers to jump to the PCI-X setup.

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

Is PCI-X superior to AGP down the road? What's the speed rating on it? I think I saw it on some server boards already maybe? If new cards do come out for PCI-X, we might see it on high-end server boards first perhaps? Will PCI-X be dedicated to a single task like AGP is to video?

 

[chizow]

Aren't PCI cards still widely used in desktop publishing/graphic design for their dual/quad head capabilities? I thought PCI would've died a year ago or so, as the newer GPUs simply require more bandwidth than PCI 2.2 can provide, but if you can increase the bandwidth with PCI-X, then who knows. I think they'll keep making PCI cards as long as mobos with no AGP slot and integrated video are worse than what they can slap onto a PCI card.

Chiz

 

[Rand]

Not any time even remotely soon IMHO.
There is still an extremely large market for PCI graphics cards for motherboards with integrated video without an AGP expansion port.
Precious few servers even have an AGP expansion port, and a large number of those don't have integrated graphics... those that do often install a seperate PCI graphics card for multi-monitor.

I don't see PCI graphics cards going anywhere for the next 5 years at a minimum, and I think it highly likely we will continue to see "high performance" PCI graphics cards for the next 2 years at a minimum.

PCI graphics cards have a large market in the Pro 2D graphics design wherein 5-6monitors connected to a single system arent terribly unusual, in such a scenario there are few AGP boards around that can drive 4+ monitors so it's common practice to use PCI to expand that.

We are certain to see PCI-X based graphcis cards, but even PCI 2.2/2.3 compliant graphics cards should have a long life-span ahead of them.