PCI-SIG Publishes PCI-E 3.0 Spec, Double the Bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0
PCI-SIG Publishes PCI-E 3.0 Spec, Double the Bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0
Posted 11/19/2010 at 7:18am
| by Paul Lilly
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Move over USB, because PCI Express is going 3.0, too. PCI-SIG, the special interest group responsible for PCI Express, published the PCI-E 3.0 specification on Thursday, which the consortium describes as a low-cost, higher-performance I/O technology that now includes a new 128b/130b encoding scheme and a data rate of 8 gigatransfers per second. In other words, double the bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0.
"Each new version of the PCI-E spec has doubled the bandwidth of the prior generation," said Nathan Brookwood, research fellow at Insight 64. "The latest group of PCI-E architects and designers drove the standard forward while maintaining complete backward compatibility for Gen 1 and Gen 2 devices. Rarely has a standard advanced so non-disruptively through three major evolutionary cycles. The ability to pull this off demonstrates not only the ingenuity of the Gen 3 developers, but also the insight of those who defined the earlier versions in such an extensible manner."
Want more numbers? The PCI-SIG says products designed for PCI-E 3.0 can "achieve bandwidth near 1GB/s in one direction on a single-lane (x1) configuration and scale to an aggregate approaching 32GB/s on a sixteen-lane (x16) configuration." What the new encoding scheme does is allow for near 100 percent efficiency, PCI-SIG says.
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rick mcknight
November 22, 2010 at 10:30am
The initial target applications for PCIe 3.0 are expected to be graphics.
<a href="http://racknine.com/blog/hardware/pci-express-3-0-base-specification-announced/">Ethernet, Infinband, storage and PCIe switches</a> will continue to drive the bandwidth evolution.
carage
November 19, 2010 at 1:31pm
Any news on the notebook front, so are they coming up with ExpressCard 3.0 as well?
JohnP
November 19, 2010 at 9:32am
1st I was waiting for USB 3.0, SATA 6, and then 6 cores. Now I want to get UEFI or whatever Bios AND this new fangled PCI-e 3... THEN there is Light Steop coming up. Will it never end.
I did just get a GTX 580. Relatively quiet, with a slight buzz during WOW. Runs fine on a 750 Watt Cooler Master power supply.
Matt_Rapp
November 19, 2010 at 8:09am
Thats it, I'm not buying a new motherboard until I can get one with USB 3.0, SATA 6.0 Gb/s, PCI Express 3.0 across the board. Hear that Intel! I might go AMD if you can't get your chipset act together!
thetechchild
November 19, 2010 at 8:17am
Simply buy everything as it's nearing obsoletion but is still quite mainstream. That's how you get stuff dirt cheap. I'm sure in 2012 I won't be able to resist upgrading again (c'mon, the possibility of USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s SSDs, DDR4, PCIe 3, cheap 6-cores... I'm already drooling!), but for now I'm content with the moderate $700 build I just got.
(including the GTS 250, AMD 965 Phenom II X4, 4GB DDR3, 320 GB mechanical HD, and non-USB 3.0/SATA 6Gb/s mobo whose model # I'm too lazy to get)
logicmaster2003
November 19, 2010 at 7:28am
ouch !! this will be a major 'ouch' in the wallet for those who have shelled out $$$$$ for video card upgrades. For I know video card manufacturer will have to come up with another hordes of NEW video cards that will adapt and take advantage of pcie-3.0.
I for one, still am stuck to nvidia's GTX260 and hasn't upgraded since. I've been eyeing on GTX275 then GTX280 came, and every time I'm eyeing on one model, something new keeps coming up !! I stopped following the trend and in just under a year, it already jumped to GTX580 !
How do you guys manage to keep an eye on what you want ??
Talcum X
November 19, 2010 at 8:03am
I'm still running AGP on a P4. I'm way overdue for an upgrade....but without a job, I'm only able to sit and watch the technology pass me by. Hopefully this will change for me soon. Then I will probably still wait for a board with this, SATA 6Gb and USB 3.0 in 1 mobo and go from there.
Paul_Lilly
November 19, 2010 at 7:51am
PCI-E 3.0 won't suddenly render PCI-E 2.0 capable cards obsolete; that GTX 580 that Joe Gamer just purchased is going to serve him well for a long while to come. And because PCI-E 3.0 is backward compatible, Joe Gamer can migrate his existing videocard over, should he eventually upgrade to a PCI-E 3.0 equipped motherboard once they become available (2011).
-Paul Lilly
hiawg
November 19, 2010 at 7:47am
I am still using a GTX 260 also. I don't plan on upgrading until it can't run games at 1920 X 1080.
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