PCI-E The next AGP... in more ways than one?

[KillaKilla]

[Pure speculation, completely unbased and involving no quotes]

Will PCI-E teurn into another AGP in that it will be used solely (or almost solely) for Video Cards? I ask this because I can't imagine another application that will, in the near future, need the amount of bandwidth that PCI-E will offer- or even one that is constrained by the current PCI standard. Assuming that GBE stays on it's own channel,what expansion card will use more bandwidth than already provided by PCI? FYI I do realize that AXP 8x is not currently being saturated, but, IMO that will change withing the next 2 years.

1/2 way to the point... do current PCI SCSI controllers use all of PCI's bandwidth? (are they constrained by it?)

I'm essentially worried that after the initial rush of PCI-E MB Mfgs will include 1 or 2 PCI-E slots along with 3 or 4 PCI slots... and that sound card Mfgs will continue to use PCI for backwards compatability.

Also, will native PCI-E cards work in legacy PCI slots? Will legacy PCI cards work in PCI-E slots?

-Gunslinger

 

[Lonyo]

There are different types of PCI-Express slots, 1x to 16x IIRC.
I also belive thta a current style PCI slot can sit next to a new 1x PCI-E slot so either card can be used.

It seems that most new boards are going to have a mix of PCI and PCI-E cards on them though. The slots are not compatible though, so a PCI-E card will only work in a PCI-E slot and vice versa.

 

[ScrewFace]

The 1st-generation of PCI-xPress videocards will run at 16x or 4.2 GB/sec of bandwidth and the 1st regular PCI-X for peripherals such as soundcards will run at twice the speed of todays 33 MHz/66 MHz PCI bus.:beer:

 

[Pudgygiant]

It's not going to be an EISA deal, where the slot detects whether it's a PCI-E or PCI card? That's a bummer.

EDIT
And screwface, PCI-X != PCI-E

 

[Matthias99]

No. They're entirely different standards, although it's designed to be software-compatible with existing PCI (so that you can easily have both PCI-E and PCI slots in one system). The pinouts are so different (due to the parallel/serial nature of it) that it was probably too hard to try and get them to fit the same slots.

As for the OP:

Right now the only things I can think of that really need more bandwidth than PCI can provide are video cards, high-speed data networks (GBE for one, but also Fibre Channel 1/2Gbps links), and RAID disk arrays. It would be nice for servers to be able to have several high-speed network hookups, or multiple RAID arrays without bogging everything down severely. USB2.0 and FireWire800 are also eating up bus bandwidth in consumer systems. The increased speed of PCI-E is not *critical* now, but it gives a lot more headroom for future devices (which PCI does NOT).