The Inner Workings of PCI Express: How Hardware Works

[neeyik]

PCI Express has been around for 20 years, and with no sign of it being replaced any time soon, we dive into the technology to see what makes it so special.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2664-pci-express-explained/

 

[KofeViR]

Damn its been 20 years now. I remember PCI and AGP graphics

Back when GPUs were cheaper, but obsolete after 12-24 months

 

[DSirius]

Great article, I read it like a modern day fairy-tale.
Also, clear, concise and with a neat breeze scent through time.

 

[kira setsu]

Good read, explained why I can't use 2 of my SATA ports in my system because I'm using 3 m.2 drives, sorta sucks because my final drive has to be connected through an external dock.

It's wild to think of how much data is being shuffled through PCs these days.

 

[RandomWAN]

It's funny how 25+ years later I can still identify all of the major components, slots, and connectors on that motherboard, even though that board and most of those haven't been used in ~20 years.

 

[toooooot]

Damn its been 20 years now. I remember PCI and AGP graphics

Back when GPUs were cheaper, but obsolete after 12-24 months

That is one of the few things I can forgive GPU makers. I ran with 1080ti for a very long time. And it did well for me.
But still, a lot of people no longer upgrade as often as before.
I think they will regret it eventually. You literally buy a new computer and then buy a GPU which is worth just as much.

 

[KofeViR]

That is one of the few things I can forgive GPU makers. I ran with 1080ti for a very long time. And it did well for me.
But still, a lot of people no longer upgrade as often as before.
I think they will regret it eventually. You literally buy a new computer and then buy a GPU which is worth just as much.

My 980 Ti @ 1.6 GHz lasted for years as well but having the same cards for years is pretty boring .. It pretty much had 1070 Ti / 1080 performance in most games with OC and I have no reason to upgrade until 1080 Ti came out really

I got a 1080 Ti eventually (1 year after launch or so, on sale) and it was great too but overclocking was dead compared to 900 series, my 1080 Ti had like 5% OC gain

980 Ti is probably the most insane OC chip ever .. Stock is ~1200 MHz, most custom cards did about 1500-1600 MHz, it was like 30% perf decrease when I removed the OC

 

[wiyosaya]

Great article. My wife particularly enjoys the Windows 4-second cold boot time afforded by the Zen 3/PCIe-4.0 system I built for her about a year ago. I'm planning on Zen 4 upgrades for my systems in the not-too-distant future.

I guess I was in rare territory with the EISA bus - not even given a mention in this article.

 

[FreemanHT]

Very pleasant reading! I had PCI, AGP video cards.

I had a bad time with my GeForce4 MX 440 - PCI.

 

[zulu53]

It would be a more accurate view of history if a development history of data flow within a total PC was also included. The number and connection points of bus's changed first and this then would trigger the need for a new standard or evolution of an existing standard: I.e. bus development followed architecture development, there was no need for (and consequently no) independent development of bus's. Now if we could only go quantum then interface management would perhaps not include bus's at all (a true SOC then; meaning in this case the complete system not the smartphone pseudo system. Like the human brain - the holy grail of computer design development).