Should we wait for PCI-e 2.0?

[crazlunatic]

I'm sure by now, everyone knows PCI-e 2.0 mobo will be out in the next few months.

My question is should anyone looking to buy a PC today wait until the support for PCI-e 2.0 on motherboards come out?

 

[Hatman]

bh I personally cant see it making much difference, PCI-E 2 will increase the bandwidth, but current cards dont even use up all the bandwidth of the current slots, I've bought mine now, but what you do is up to you.

I don think it'll make much difference.

 

[KingSkully]

Is it possible that the latencies could be lower?

Since I bought in this February, I am waiting.

 

[crazlunatic]

I'm sure by now, everyone knows PCI-e 2.0 mobo will be out in the next few months.

My question is should anyone looking to buy a PC today wait until the support for PCI-e 2.0 on motherboards come out?

thanks Hatman. I bought an AGP mobo 2years and 10 months ago, and now I am regretting it because I am unable to:
- install DDR2 RAM
- install PCI-e video card

 

[andybird123]

PCIe 1.1 and PCIe 2.0 are compatible with each other, you can use a PCI 2.0 graphics card in a PCIe 1.1 slot and vice versa

they've already drafted the spec for PCIe 3.0, so by the time you've waited for PCIe 2.0, PCIe 3.0 will be months away from coming to town as well... and then when that comes out there'll be...

X38 doesn't really offer anything over P35 that's worth worrying about imo

 

[enewmen]

From what little I know, the PCIe-2.0 is backwards/Forwards compatible with PCIe. The bandwidth still isn't fully used yet anyway. So, I don't see a problem with buying a PCIe video card now and sticking it in a future PCIe2.0 slot later. (AGP simply can't work with PCIe)

 

[crazlunatic]

Are you guys saying that I can stick a PCIe 2.0 card into a PCI-e 1.1 slot?

Also, the X38 and P35 are the only chipsets out that can work with PCIe 2.0 right now rite?

 

[fonzy]

Doesn't PCI-express 2.0 support more power so you don't need to plug more power connectors into the video card?

I'm one of the ones that got stuck with a agp motherboard with no pci express,I'm pretty much going to build a new computer anyway but if I had to do it again I would wait.

 

[vonwombat]

Are you guys saying that I can stick a PCIe 2.0 card into a PCI-e 1.1 slot?

Also, the X38 and P35 are the only chipsets out that can work with PCIe 2.0 right now rite?

Yes, you can stick a PCI-E 2.0 card into a PCI-E 1.1 slot.
The P35 dosen't support PCI-E 2.0 as far as I know, though it would be good, because I own one.

 

[crazlunatic]

What supports PCI-e 2.0? And if I could stick PCI-e 2.0 into a PCI-e 1.1, then theres probably no point in waiting???

 

[crazlunatic]

Are you guys saying that I can stick a PCIe 2.0 card into a PCI-e 1.1 slot?

Also, the X38 and P35 are the only chipsets out that can work with PCIe 2.0 right now rite?

why would you wait and u know how much longer exactly until pci-e 2 support is out?

I own a vista blog site and the number of visitors is decreasing. My PC makes Vista barely usable and I need to upgrade in order to use Vista full time.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The onyl advantage with current cards is the power configuration with the PCIe 2.0 spec supplying 75W more over the PEG slot.

However I expect most early PCIe 2.0 cards that need more juice than can be provided to offer the external power connector option like we currently have.

Long term (like 2+ years) sure it'll matter, but if you want to game now, it's not worth waiting IMO. By the time you want to upgrade again likely you'll want to upgrade the CPU and RAM.

If you're fine gaming with what you have then wait, but if you need to upgrade now (for a game like Bioshock [wait til it arrives before deciding]) then get the best you can at a reasonable price. There will be offerings from all 3 (intel, AMD, nV) for PCIe 2.0 Mobos, but whether it's worth waiting or not we won't know until the PCIe 2.0 cards tstart appearing and adoption takes hold.

Despite your statements about AGP, look how long it took for that to die off, I doubt they'd completely remove support for PCIe 1.1 anytime soon; supposedly the 1.0x stuff is an issue, but that should only present a problem for people looking at current multi-slot configurations, and IMO people who can afford Xfire or SLi can afford a new board when their forced to have it.

 

[rockyjohn]

Yes, you can stick a PCI-E 2.0 card into a PCI-E 1.1 slot.
The P35 dosen't support PCI-E 2.0 as far as I know, though it would be good, because I own one.

Please undertand that even if the PCIe 2 card can physically fit and may operate in the PCIe 1 slot, the PCIe 1 slot does not meet the power or bandwith requirments for PCIe 2 - so you card may be throttled down on power and if its normall output exceeds the lower PCIe 1 bandwith, it too will be scaled back. People should be careful when addressing what systems or chipsets will simply run a PCIe 2 card and which meet the full specs to be able to fully utilize a card meeting the specs. It is obviously causing confusion among readers.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I agree, but the power will be more of a concern than bandwidth IMO.

The power would be the one that would actually underclock the card if there's a shortfall, whereas half the bandwidth would experience a slowdown like 8X on the current 1.1 cards, and that's not that huge in comparison, whereas throttling the GPU and VRAM speed enough to make up for the 75W power delivery difference could be huge if it doesn't have the extra power connectors to support the shortfall.

 

[mactronix]

Sorry this is a bit of a noob question but its something i never actually got around to finding out but is the amount of power supplied to the AGP/PCIE slot standard across all boards and if so what is it/or is it as i suspect a lot more complicated and depends on PSU/MOBO etc
Thanks
Mactronix

 

[crazlunatic]

so ya seeing that it will take so long for pci-e 2 to go mainstream, the most logical thing would be to just go w/ the current pci-e 1.1

one question, can i play bioshock and crysis with current pci-e 1.1?

 

[prodystopian]

no one knows specifics for crysis. However, I have seen an article at pc.ign.com (the Bioshock review there) where they say that an 8800 GTX runs it quite well. As for Crysis, I would guess PCIe 1.1 will have to run it because the developers said that they were making the game so that old hardware can play the game. The question will be how well it will run on current hardware.

 

[crazlunatic]

I see. i guess the best thing to do is to go w/ current then

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah the G90 and R680 (or whatever) 'should' be backwards compatible (or else they're cutting their marketing throats), so for those short term games, worry about the rest of the system, there should be PCie 1.1 solutions for you for both of them, and I doubt that 16 lanes at double the speed would make much difference in performance, because they'll likely still be more bound by the VPU and CPU than the communication between both. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if the I/O on the CPU/Memory start causing more problem than the interface with the graphics card.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Sorry this is a bit of a noob question but its something i never actually got around to finding out but is the amount of power supplied to the AGP/PCIE slot standard across all boards and if so what is it

Yes it is standard, with of course the standard fluctuation due to quality (plus you can over-volt a slot).

I'd have to check for the absolute number but IIRC the standard for AGP 3.0 is 40W (AGP 2.0 was 25W IIRC) and for PCIe 1.1 it's 75W for sure, PCIe 2.0 is 150W. I'm not sure what the limitations are on PCIe 1.0x without checking (don't have time, just killing tim on hold).

AGPPro50 is maxed a 50W, and AGPPro110 is maxed at 110W (seems logical, no? ).

 

[vonwombat]

I agree, but the power will be more of a concern than bandwidth IMO.

The power would be the one that would actually underclock the card if there's a shortfall, whereas half the bandwidth would experience a slowdown like 8X on the current 1.1 cards, and that's not that huge in comparison, whereas throttling the GPU and VRAM speed enough to make up for the 75W power delivery difference could be huge if it doesn't have the extra power connectors to support the shortfall.

Accoring to the rumors circulating on the Internet, the power consumption of a 9800GTX will be lower than the one of an 8800GTX, due to its 65nm architecture.

so ya seeing that it will take so long for pci-e 2 to go mainstream,
the most logical thing would be to just go w/ the current pci-e 1.1


one question, can i play bioshock and crysis with current pci-e 1.1?

Crysis will run on a PCI-E 1.1 card, an 8800 should give decent performance, and an 9800 should perform very well. Keep in mind that despite being limited by the PCI-E 1.1 bandwidth, the 9800 will perform much better than an 8800, even in a PCI-E 1.1 slot.
Bioshock demo runs maxed out in DX10 on my 8800GTS(PCI-E 1.1, of course) with 30-80 FPS.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Accoring to the rumors circulating on the Internet, the power consumption of a 9800GTX will be lower than the one of an 8800GTX, due to its 65nm architecture.[/quote]

True but it's still going to pull more than 75W, so if it's on PCIe it'll need an extra power plug even if the GF9xxx series can pull under 150W and not require a power plug for when running on PCIe 2.0. The main thing will be to ensure that that extra 75W is covered for the PCIe 1.1 option regardless of whether the PCIe2.0 option needs another connector or not.

 

[jwolf24601]

I dont see a reason to wait as the 2.0 cards will work in 1.1 slots.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/27/pci_express_scaling_analysis/

According to this article it took a long time for the PCI-E 1.0 video cards to use the 16x of 1.0, and it still doesnt look like thier using all of it. The next gen video cards will probably take a while to use double that bandwidth, so any performance hit will likely be small.

As for power I am willing to wager the first 2.0 cards will have plugs on them for the 1.1 slot users, as not doing so would limit thier market a lot.

 

[Maziar]

PCIE-2 will work in P35 boards (at least asus ) :
http://xbitlabs.com/news/mainboards/display/20070817093804.html

Note that these limitations have been revealed only for the Blitz mainboard series that uses CrossLinx chip. Other Asus mainboards on Intel P35 chipset should have no problems with PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards support.

 

[crazlunatic]

what other board will PCIe-2 work on?