Maximum PC

Hi! I heard PCI-E 4.0 will be released soon. Is this true? I just bought a ASUS Rampage IV Extreme and a i7 3930K as a final Wo Ho before I turn 16 and get a car and start paying expenses for it and finish saving up for college. I was thinking well a old Athlon X2 can play most newer games just enough to get by, so I should be able to get by with a i7 3930K for a long time. Then my ASUS Rampage IV Exteme has 4 PCI-E 3.0 slots and since 3.0 like just came out I was thinking I should be able to get the full power out of any future video cards for a few years. I plan on upgrading to a new video card every time a new version of DX is available, like buying one of the first top of the line DX10 cards like a 8800GT and then buying a GTX 480 as soon as DX11 is available. You get the idea, buy a top of the line card with all the newest tech every few years. But then I heard PCI-E 4.0 is going to be released soon and that really doesn't make me happy, I am hoping to get a few years out of 3.0 before I upgrade my entire PC or just run 4.0 cards on a 3.0 slot. So if someone can verify if its true that PCI-E 4.0 slots are going to be released soon I'd appreciate it! I don't think it is because 3.0 is like really new, would just like to know for sure so I can have peace of mind. Thanks!

Even if PCI-Express 4.0 was around the corner, you shouldn't act like your drawers are all bunched up because:

• PCI-Express is forward and backwards compatible
• The GTX 680 won't start hitting a performance penalty until you drop it to a PCI-Express 2.0 x4 interface. Maybe the newer cards might need more bandwidth, but I doubt they'll start needing something like PCI-Express 3.0 x16 overnight.

OK. I know its backwards compatible and yes like no card needs the amount of bandwidth PCI-E 3.0 has. A GTX 680 on a PCI-E 2.0 slot has about the same performance as in 3.0. Its just a little annoying to go spending almost $500 on a Motherboard with the latest tech that should last a few years that ends up being a few months. Either way, if PCI-E 4.0 is coming or if its not, I don't have the cash to upgrade again for a while. Plenty happy with my set up anyway! Well... Maybe a GTX 680 Ultra would be nice

PCIe has more uses than just the PCIe slots on the motherboard and why it may become more interesting when PCIe 4.0 doubles the pipelines available. S/ATA can use it, USB 3.0 seems to be moving from Asmedia (or other branded) dedicated controllers to the CPU and thus use it (but still connect to the the bus off cpu or not), networking is starting to use it more. I'm not sure because it was before my time, but Thunderbolt will probably use the PCIe bus as a connector the same as it did under another name. As the bus runs out of pipes needed, these standards evolve. PCI shared everything and why PCIe came around in the first place...for it's pipes.

But I don't see 4.0 being fully rolled out until next year at the earliest. Parts may start showing up, but not the whole bundle. AMD may have a first out the door since they're on the motherboard still, but Intel needs to implement this on-chip and would be slow to develop and release. Maybe Skylake/Skymont since they'll be 10nm and have room?

I just wouldn't be bothered by not having the highest number of anything. That $500 board will leave you happy for a long time very easily. That goes for the latest DX upgrade frenzy as well. DX11 has been out quite a while now and just recently have I seen playable titles really utilizing it. If you think about it, DX11 was an update for Vista and included when Windows7 rolled out. That was a long time ago in PC years, games took a while to actually utilize it, and by the time they did the cards that supported it early on were out of date themselves. Using this list and the fact that DX11 rolled out Oct '09, it's safe to say it's fine to wait a full year to purchase a card with a new DX level. Even then, the OS needs to support it as well. Win8 is rolling out with DX11.1 and there's not much fanfare over that compared to OpenGL's progress.