My beef with 1x PCIe connectors is... they are only 1x. WTF? That's less bandwidth than PCI (unless you try to use multiple PCI devices at once).
That's wrong, x1 is 250MB/s, PCI is 133MB/s, and PCI-E has full bandwidth in both directions simultaniously.
You are correct. It has 250mbps half-duplex bandwidth which is faster than PCI. That is 250up and down for 500mbps total for PCIe1x (8000mbps full-duplex for a 16x connector which is where you get the "8gbps" you hear most often). For some reason I was thinking it was 250mbps full-duplex and thusly slower than PCIe1x for half-duplex :/
http://www.d-silence.com/feature.php?id=252
Nah, the CPU portion of the board remains the same size, so reducing the port panel size does nothing to help. Micro ATX is a good option but still not embraced by gamers. As for cubes, just build them with Cyrix III processors since cubes don't matter. Really, from a performance standpoint their a dead end, and they're fairly horrible for HTPC as well. In the first case, a small tower works better and in the second, a horizontal Micro ATX dektop is superior.
The IO backplane could be half as tall or half as long easily. Although that wouldn't help to reduce the footprint of the board to less than existing designs it could help free up some valuable space for ventalation. The SFF Dell I'm typing on right now exhausts all of it's heat right past the IO backplane (the entire PC is only ~4" wide). It has no PS/2 connectors on it (unfortunately they still put a parallel and serial port on it though).
Gamers don't embrace micro ATX because micro ATX boards aren't marketed to gamers and ussually lack OC features. If shuttle can make an SLI board that is half the size of a micro ATX board there is no technical reason they couldn't make "enthusiast" micro ATX board.
All of my cubes are gaming machines
My current main rig is a cube and is SLI capable. It has just as much performance as any other mobo equipped with the same CPU and GFX. Outside of exotic OCing cube PCs are just as powerful as full sized towers. If I wanted to slap raid-0 raptors, SLIed 8800s, and an x6800 into my current case it would work fine (I'd need rear-exhausing GFX cards and to cut a few more intake vents, but rear-exhausting GFX is normal for 8800s and holes in the side panels a very simple mod). My OC would be somewhat limited by mobo and HSF choice, that is all.
Cube PCs are a bit too big and the wrong shape for most HTPC applications. Hardly damning of the case form factor. Size is far from being the biggest problem with the HTPC anyway.
The only thing you really get for a full ATX board is extra expansion slots. But I figure you need 1-2 for GFX , 0-1 for sound, 0-1 for network, 0-1 for raid. So you need 1-5 slots. You can fit 4 in a cube case with ease, most "gaming rigs" use only 1 or 2 slots. The biggest problem is huge GFX card HSFs..., they eat up a lot of space in a cube PC. meaning if you do dual GFX you have, at most, 1 more usuable expansion slot left.
More back on topic: no, your sound card and 10/100 NIC don't each *need* the extra bandwidth of PCIe (at least not at this time, your raid controller and 1000mbit NIC do though) and getting PCIe ones instead of PCI ones won't make your network noticibly faster or sound better. But PCIe has many other features that make it better such as dedicated bandwidth, reduced latencies, and smaller connectors (for 1x) making it cheaper and easier to deploy and if you try to use more than 1 device on the PCI bus at once (this includes many integrated ports) at once there will be a noticable performance degridation. I think it also generates less EMI has higher EMI resistance, can provide more power, has better power saving options, and uses significantly less power/performance.
This isn't like Dual GFX or Dual Core, this is a real technological advancement that improves performance, effeciency, and lowers cost. Your sound card didn't get any better when it went to PCI from ISA either, but imagine the impact it would have on your system to include an ISA bridge and a huge ISA connector on your new mobo... GFX cards didn't get any faster when they first went to PCIe16x from AGP either (they maybe pushed that one through a little sooner than they needed to, but we needed to switch over sometime to get the new interface available and cheap). The sooner we get switched over the sooner we can all reap the full benefits. PCIe is good, don't fight it
We are kind of waiting on increased availability of PCIe devices though :/ I need a new WiFi card sometime in the near future but I really hate to buy a PCI one...
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