PCI Express!!! What???

A

arclite20

New Member
:confused: I am thinking about getting a new board. Alot of the new boards have PCi express slots. I have built 4 computers so far i never messed with PCI express. PCI express X1 and PCI express x16 could someone explain and should i look for a new board with these slots instead of regular 1 agp and 5 PCI
 
pci express is for graphics cards. and are faster than agp so it would be worth investing in them. but of course, it means a new graphics card
 
the cards themselves are not faster than AGP, but PCI-Express allows for much more bandwidth than AGP, making it faster....so yes PCI-E is the way to go...x1 and x4? are not used for video cards, they are used for things like network cards and the like..x16 is used for video cards...i have a feeling AGP will linger around for a while longer, but it is more or less being phased out.
 
PCi-E is the way of the future:) soon agp will dissepear from the market so if you buy a board whith agp you will be having problems when you want to upgrade your system, also the PCI-E is a bit faster so that would be a much better choice;)
 
Another thing to do with PCI-e is SLI. I currently have an AGP card and it works pretty good for most games, but I would like it to run a lot better and also for upcoming games I don't know how it would hold up. SLI allows for TWO graphics cards to be used and I assume this just means twice the amount of video RAM? (Maybe someone could go into a little further on this?) If your'e going to buy one of these, yes its a little more expensive for the motherboard, but not too bad at all, around $150 USD. If your'e going to PCI-e anyway, I would rather spnd an extra 30 on the motherboard so in the future it makes for easier and "cheaper" upgrading...
 
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there is about an 80% performance difference when you have 2 video cards, and ya, pretty much everything just gets doubled (ram, speeds, pipelines, etc). GO with PCI-E, and try to find one with 2 of them, so you can SLI in the future.
 
The PCI-Express X1 slot is useless. I bought my mobo before I really got into computers not really knowing what to get. I decided to go with the a mobo that had 1 PCI-E x16 slot for the video card 4 PCI-E x1 slots and 2 regular PCI slots. So, now I have 4 empty spaces that I wish I would have had regular PCI slots. I could have at least added IDE or SATA connections, but with the PCI-E, no one makes any cards for them.
 
but buying pci express, means an upgrade of mobo and cpu.
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you dont have to change your cpu, and you would only get a pci-e graphics card if you already had or where getting a new motherboard that supported it
 
aramp1 said:
The PCI-Express X1 slot is useless. I bought my mobo before I really got into computers not really knowing what to get. I decided to go with the a mobo that had 1 PCI-E x16 slot for the video card 4 PCI-E x1 slots and 2 regular PCI slots. So, now I have 4 empty spaces that I wish I would have had regular PCI slots. I could have at least added IDE or SATA connections, but with the PCI-E, no one makes any cards for them.
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there are a few companies that make cards for x1 and x4, but they are freakishly expensive when compared to PCI and USB equivalents
 
Please show me! I've heard people say that they exist, but I've scoured newegg and others with no results.
 
but buying pci express, means an upgrade of mobo and cpu.
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I've been tinkering with the idea of getting a PCI Express board and no I dont have to change cpu and I've got a SKT 754 CPU.
 
aramp1 said:
Please show me! I've heard people say that they exist, but I've scoured newegg and others with no results.
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here are some links to network cards http://shopping.yahoo.com/s:Network Adapter:4035-Interface Type=PCI Express x1

supposedly soundblaster will be releasing a new card soon called the Zenith that is PCI-E but it keeps getting delayed, first it was march of 05 then may, now whenever...but it always works like that

pretty much the only thing i could find was network cards...everything else has lots of information about stuff "in the works" and "coming down the pipe" and all that...so i guess for the time being i just hope you have alot of USB ports:)
 
Cool. Now if I could only get something usefull like a PCI-E SATA or IDE controller. I had heard about Soundblaster's card a while ago, but could never find it.
 
I am planning on upgrading soon. maybe two or 3 monthsi havent decided whether to get a 939 or 754 socket yet. but i will probaly get a board with PCI X.
 
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