PCI Express 3.0 specification released

Emil

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Staff

As expected, the PCI-SIG has announced the PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 specification. The 3.0 specification is now available to all members of the PCI-SIG.

PCIe 3.0 has numerous advantages over existing bus specifications: it operates at an 8GT/s data rate (the original PCIe was at 2.5GT/s and PCIe 2.0 spec is at 5GT/s), will have different electrical models, and has a 128-bit/130-bit encoding scheme (the 8-bit and 10-bit scheme is no longer required). The PCI-SIG says that PCIe 3.0 has bandwidth of about 1GB/s in one direction on an x1 slot and can scale up to 32GB/s on an x16 slot commonly used for graphics cards.

Other enhancements to the protocol and software layers of the architecture encompass data reuse hints, atomic operations, dynamic power adjustment mechanisms, latency tolerance reporting, loose transaction ordering, I/O page faults, and BAR resizing. The PCIe specification is also backwards compatible with older versions of PCIe to make sure current add-in cards on the market can still work with new motherboards.

"The PCI-SIG remains dedicated to I/O innovation and we are proud to release the PCIe 3.0 specification to our members," Al Yanes, PCI-SIG chairman and president, said in a statement. "The PCIe 3.0 architecture details significant improvements over our two previous PCIe specifications, providing our members with the performance and functionality they need to continue to be innovators in their fields."

Gamers and PC enthusiasts likely remember when we moved from AGP to PCIe. The performance improvement coming from an AGP video card to a PCIe card was impressive. Later, when the PCIe 2.0 slot came out with about twice the bandwidth of the original, again video cards had significantly better performance. Are you excited for PCIe 3.0?

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great, now I have to wait even longer to get a new PC. I was going to upgrade after the new Intel chips came out, now this. before that it was SATA 6.... etc...
 
Eh go ahead and get a new pc. Theyll always be coming out with new, faster stuff. Just make sure youre gettin the most bang for ya buck
 
I feel PCIe 2.0 is gonna last a while until products come out that can take advantage of the full 8 GT/s... I don't know of many things that can even take full advantage of a 5GT/s lane.
 
The greatest thing about all of this to me is the continued support as a backwards compatible interface, so you can still plugin PCIe1.0-2.1 devices into a PCIe3.0 slot. While it will like slow down/limit the development of PCIe3.0 devices, at the same time it is a great service to users and manufacturers.
 
poundsmack said:
great, now I have to wait even longer to get a new PC. I was going to upgrade after the new Intel chips came out, now this. before that it was SATA 6.... etc...

With that attitude, you will never buy a new PC, ever.
 
prismatics said:
poundsmack said:
great, now I have to wait even longer to get a new PC. I was going to upgrade after the new Intel chips came out, now this. before that it was SATA 6.... etc...

With that attitude, you will never buy a new PC, ever.

and I'll have you know my Pentium 3 computer works for me just fine ;)
 
Like SATA 3 this will probably increase the costs of motherboards quite alot when it's released, I'll wait a while =/
 
"Gamers and PC enthusiasts likely remember when we moved from AGP to PCIe. The performance improvement coming from an AGP video card to a PCIe card was impressive."

I call BS big time. I remember the move, and i also clearly remember, a 6600GT on both slots had NO difference.
 
grr no edit or delete option...
$6 more for it to be added (circuitry) to the southbridge i mean. You can find what the average cost of motherboard components online.

I remember one audio chipset (few years ago) was like $10... Then i remember thinking, "How the heck could people honestly be saying motherboard audio is as good as a dedicated card!"

Techspot is the bizzomb!
 
mmmm...I wouldn't say nothing, although in the vast amount of scenario's that is the case.

One exception to the rule would be a dual GPU card (HD 5970 or GTX 295 for example) using CPU physics. Normally most graphics computation is done within the GPU itself -hence the main reason why games tend to be GPU rather than CPU dependant. If CPU physics is added to the graphical mix then the communication between card and CPU can saturate the available lanes. This is likely to become more of an issue if physics/PhysX starts making better use of multi-core CPU's and enthusiast grade cards can churn out frames unrestrained by a CPU limitation, unlike the present case ( hence fps drops when enabling physics properties whether it be PhysX, Havok, Bullet or game engine based)
 
I have interest. Maybe someday in the future I'll buy a computer with USB 3.0, PSI-E 3.0, Sata 3.0, and some Core i9! ;)
 
Quoted for truth:

jurassic4096 said:
"Gamers and PC enthusiasts likely remember when we moved from AGP to PCIe. The performance improvement coming from an AGP video card to a PCIe card was impressive."

I call BS big time. I remember the move, and i also clearly remember, a 6600GT on both slots had NO difference.

... Just like the upgrade from PCI to AGP which made zero difference, as well. The only *real* difference would be that newer, better cards are always available for newer, better slots, which in practical terms, puts things like AGP and PCI at a natural disadvantage.

But with the same model card, you could always expect inseparable performance results.
 
What's the point of moving to version 3.0 when Intel chipsets can barely supply sufficient bandwith to 2 PCIe Version 2.0 X16 video card slots ? The only boards with abundant PCIe bandwith are those like the EVGA Classified X58 series which incorporate NF200 chips from Nvidia.
 
Let me just remind you all that the pci express 2.0 is ONLY 4GT/s because it HAS TOO MUCH OVERHEAD NOISE LOSS. There are many things currently uising the 4GT/s.The new pci express 3.0 will have 8GT/s making it much faster then 2.0.
 
I hope they take there sweet time coming out with this so I can keep feeling like my video card is a beast.
 
If this is just another DDR3 or a SATA3, then no thanks.

I can't even notice any improvement on these "3s" that have come out. Sure they're faster at burst speeds, but burst speeds mean nothing.

Just another marketing gimmick to replace your motherboard with a new one.
 
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