PCI Express

[buddhika]

when will PCI express cards will appear in retail products?
will budget type cards get it????
how fast is it???? 16X?

 

[imported_Aelius]

Makes no difference. Unless you plan on using multiple PCI slots its junk.

No point using it for video cards at all. Like AGP 8X its a marketing gimmick.

However to answer your questions:

PCI-E cards may appear as soon as next month or if not then late Summer, early Fall.

I don't think anyone knows if budget cards will get PCI-E at first but just like AGP8X eventually all cards will have it and everyone will be forced to use PCI-E.

How fast? PCI-E is double the bandwidth of AGP8X at roughly 4GB/sec. Still roughly 9 times slower than the video card's onboard bus. Hence nobody uses it to actually handle all the chatter between the CPU/Mobo video card, instead its all done onboard the video card and it only uses the AGP/PCI-E slot to talk to the CPU/Mobo when absolutely necessary. Its just too slow for anything else.

There has been virtually no difference in the performance of AGP4X and AGP8X because of this, and likely this will hold true of PCI-E as well. Its just too slow.