PCIe 2.0 discussion

[rick475]

Hello,

I am on the verge to change my computer and I wonder if waiting for PCIe 2.0 would be a good move. I guess I am confused about building a decent DX10 rig or buying a very good DX9 rig right now. If I wait, I'll probably get cheaper DDR3, a better motherboard and maybe a mid-range G9something Nvidia card. The only thing stopping me from buying is the PCIe 2.0 question. Will it improve the video card performance or not ?

From what I read, it seems it wont. So I'd like to know what you read on the subject and if you can come up with links that would be great.

Thanks

 

[jkresh]

PCIe 2.0 shouldnt be necessary (ie show a performance improvement) for another 2 generations (this is pure speculation on my part) so not an issue for g92 but might be for g100 or whatever is next. The extra power through the bus will be nice for those with high end cards but the speed difference wont be a big deal for a while. Also ddr3 probably wont drop much in price till next summer and might not till nearly 09 so I wouldnt wait for that. If you can afford it the cards that make the most sense right now are the 8800gts as they are not too expensive, have very good dx9 performance and have a shot at decent dx10 performance (while the 8600/2600 probably wont).

 

[SerpentRoyal]

HDD is the bottleneck of any modern PC. Top write speed is 50MB/s. Even PCI @ 133MB/s is more than adequate with the modern PC. A quality board will have an extra power plug for the GPU. Do you see a lot of devices for PCI-E 1x? PCI-E 2.0 is just another marketing tool.

 

[Rilex]

Very little data is going to go directly from HDD -> video. Most of it (should) be cached in physical RAM.

Plus, PCI had other limitations, like being a bus, not a point to point topology.

 

[nitromullet]

I don't think that PCIe 2.0 will offer a direct boost in performance over current PCIe 16x for single card setups, but you might see bridgeless SLI or the realistic ability to use a third video card for either "triSLI" or "triFire". Rumor also has it that Intel's new X38 chipset will have official support for both SLI and Crossfire, which (if true) would be awesome for those of us that like to spend the big bucks on video cards and are non-partisan. I also would expect NVIDIA to launch a successor to 680i around the same time as they launch the successor to the 8-series, and I bet whatever that is called, it should be worth checking out.

My personal plans right now are to pick up one of the relatively cheap P35 boards pretty soon, OC my Conroe for a while, and then replace that setup with a Kentsfield or Penryn CPU and a PCIe 2.0 (maybe DDR3) board later on. The P35/Conroe combo with Vista will make a nice replacement for my wife's aging Springdale/Northwood XP rig.

 

[lopri]

How far does your P5N32 get the E6600 to, nitromullet?

 

[lopri]

Where can I get the exact specifications of PCI-E 2.0, with regard to the changes/improvements from PCI-E 1.0?

 

[masteraleph]

Originally posted by: lopri
Where can I get the exact specifications of PCI-E 2.0, with regard to the changes/improvements from PCI-E 1.0?

PCI-E 2.0 doubles the lane width (from 250MB/s both ways to 500MB/s both ways per lane) and increases the maximum power output through the slots to 150 watts.

EDIT: corrected incorrect "voltage" to "power output"- 7:10AM is too early to write tech posts.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: lopri
How far does your P5N32 get the E6600 to, nitromullet?

It runs it at stock very well

This is definitely not an OC'er board. I tried once and wasn't even able to hit much past 300 on the FSB. This is the nForce4 board that was modified to run Conroe and re-branded as the 'SE' version.

I bought this board because I had two 7800GTXes at the time, and this was the only SLI board available that supported Conroe. I had actually picked up a BFG 680i board later on, but it was really not stable. I couldn't even install Windows because of what was later on discover to be data corruption issue. I wasn't impressed considering it was an almost $300 motherboard, so I stuck with what I had.

edit: there is a pdf FAQ available from pcisig that does a pretty good job of summing up the basic differences between PCIe 1.1 and 2.0 which might be of interest:

http://www.pcisig.com/news_roo...2_FAQ_FINAL082706a.pdf

 

[lopri]

Thank you for the FAQ document, nitro. It explains everything I wanted to know.