PCI-X can currently burst to roughly 1 gigabyte/second with the PCI-X 2.0 specification calling for roughly 4 gigs a second. This sounds pretty good initially until it is realized that PCI-X is still a shared bus and is more expensive to implement. Seeing as how a server boards usually have multiple PCI-X slots, the bandwidth is not as impressive as it sounds and multiple x1, x2 PCI Express slots will likely be more efficient and it will also be cheaper. Of course there is a slight Catch-22 in this situation also. SCSI, RAID and Gigabit Ethernet cards need to start coming out in PCI Express formats before there is any sort of acceptance. This of course takes time and although PCI Express should replace PCI-X at some point in the future, the transition will be more gradual instead of the overnight shift that will be seen with AGP and PCI Express.
PCI Express is no doubt interesting technology. Its applications go beyond just raw bandwidth as one of its design goals was to adapt to the changing role of computers beyond single data stream crunching machines to multimedia processing units that has time dependant data which the PCI bus does not have provisions for. It looks like its ability to scale up will keep it relevant for a long time and it provides many advantages over the PCI bus. Consumers should be cautioned that a lot of the benefits that it will provide may not be realized right away kind of like the lack of USB devices when USB was first introduced.
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