Will PCI Express x16 be used for more than just video cards??

[ctbrown]

Just curiouse, Will the Express x16 slots eventually be used for more than just video cards?

 

[Bobthelost]

Why do you care?

Yes they may well be, but not really for many homeuser type aplications. Of course you can stick 1x cards in the slot instead.

 

[ctbrown]

Why do you care?

The reason I ask is that there is a dwindling number of PCI slots seen in newer MOBOS. And I was wondering what PCIe upgrade options will be available in the future for things like soundcards, controller cards ect.

 

[Bobthelost]

Ah, the thing is PCIe has lots of different options from 1x to 16x.

What we use PCI for now is being replaced with 1x PCIe (the tiny slots on newer motherboards where PCI slots used to go), very few devices need the extra bandwidth of 16x slots.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: ctbrown
Just curiouse, Will the Express x16 slots eventually be used for more than just video cards?

At this point, x16 is overkill even for video cards, so it certainly won't be used for anything besides video cards anytime soon.

With PCI cards, every PCI device has a combined shared bandwidth of 133MB/sec. With PCI Express, every lane has 320MB/sec of bandwidth, and it can send and recieve at the same time at 320MB/sec. So, obviously, if a single PCI x1 link has more than twice the bancwidth of the entire PCI bus, there's no need to use PCI x16 slots for much of anything. There's nothing that comes close to using PCI x16's 5GB/sec bandwidth.

8x AGP has a bandwidth of 2GB/sec, and I haven't heard of any video card coming close to saturating that. By the time there are devices besides video cards that need the 5GB/sec that PCI x16 provides, there's a good chance that the entire PCI Express architecture will be long dead.

So no, chances are that PCI x16 will never be used for more than just video cards.