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I was wondering if anyone has upgraded to a PCI-Exprees video card and what your experiences have been with it. I'ts time to upgrade the comp and I was wondering if it's premature to switch if the transition would be painful, ie: driver issues or compatibility problems with this game or that. Would it be better to wiat 6 months or a year to do it.
From the video cards I've seen it looks like it's currently more geared for content creators using a particular suite of software as oppossed to the general consumer bouncing from different softwares, games and what not.

Last I checked, only the Intel chipsets has PCIexpress out on the shelves. And I believe that was a dual proc board, though not sure on that last.

AMD...mmm...I know nVidia's nForce3 isn't out yet with PCIexpress. Should be relatively soon, but not as of today.

PCIexpress is a must on my next machine, but that's at least a year out for me. Then there's the spectre of SLI nVidia PCIexpress cards. If I had to build NOW, I'd probably hold off on it because of lack of options and knowledge about performance.

From what I've heard, even if you get the fastest video card on the fastest PCI Express slot, you still won't see much improvement simply because none of the software utilizes that speed anyway.

6 months to a year sounds like a good time frame unless you just HAVE to have the bleeding edge.

No AMD system boards generally available at this time. Over 30 single processor Intel system boards available for LGA775 chips. All Mac G5 systems have PCI-X, but you'd have to run Linux on it to use a PCI-X graphics card. If you aren't running supported 3D rendering, its probably too early to get a PCI-X graphics card. But if you're planning on getting an X800Pro anyhow, why the heck not.

PCI-X is not the same as PCI Express.

Holy crap. Pwned. I just went to the PCI SIG site, and indeed, PCI Express is actually 3GIO, and incompatible with PCI entirely. It looks worth having in the future, but well and truly more useless than MCA right now.

PCIe is only compatible on software layer with PCI. And yes, PCIe ain't PCI-X. Latter one is a supercharged PCI.

And PCIe is a must in my new machine. Especially since my computers have a tendency to last 3yrs, at least the dual processor ones. Since that option isn't exactly affordable anymore due that Xeon and Opteron bullshit, the cycle will shorten a bit. Much.

My new PC this fall will have PCIe whether games at that time use it or not because it will be the standard within 12 months, but I am not waiting that long for a new PC.

Games won't notice it, because all is properly abstracted. DirectX doesn't care either. Your display driver will care. That's about it.

Right now PCI Express is useless due to it only being available on the newest Intel motherboards that support the new pinless CPUs which like all other recent P4 processors have extreme heat issues. PCI Express won't really "come into its own" until the NForce4 chipset is released which will enable dual PCI Express slots for SLI GeForce 68xx/66xx goodness. I would expect to see some kind of AMD PCI Express chipset (non-NForce4) soon since the GeForce 6600 will be PCI Express only at release and they are aiming that card series at "closer to people's budget" performance.

Pci-Express is worthless and will keep being this way. What it boost up is the speed from the videocard to the CPU. And obviously you don't need that kind of speed if you are playing a game.

So it won't make a difference now, nor in the future. In the same exact way of the differences between agp 2x 4x and 8x. It's useful only for video editing.

It'll not be worthless. The faster transfers from/to devices go, the less wait time there'll be for the CPU, which can be spent better then. And it's not just the goddamn graphics card slot that'll be PCIe. And if you intend to hog on old ass technology, you go girl, I've still an old 8086 mobo with 8bit ISA slots somewhere around here! Want it?

Sheesh.

PCIe is useless for the time being, at least for gamers. There isn't a game that even comes close to maxing out the X8 AGP bus. I can imagine PCIe being of use to servers, but most gamers and regular computer users have no use for PCIe as of right now. If you want to get it and wag your cock about having TEH LATEST TECH then go ahead. I'll save my money and get equivalent performance.

As for SLI, fuck that. Let the retards who pay money for Alienware boxes have that shit.

Alienware SLI and nVidia SLI are completely different and are not compatible. nVidia SLI will require a dual PCI Express motherboard (NForce4) and two 66xx or 68xx video cards. Alienware SLI requires an Alienware computer. Seeing as how nVidia has all the IP from 3dfx, I'll trust nVidia's SLI over Alienware.

stupid question.  what the hell is SLI?

Back during the 3dfx Voodoo2 days it stood for scan-line interleaving. The NVIDIA version is called Scalable Link Interface. You can read more about the original SLI, its derivatives and the new SLI here:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_sli/

Gods, the things people will do to get that extra Frame Per Second, or pretty looking pixel.....I really wish I had that much money to piss away.

OMG they're going to do it with 2 cards? I though they'd at least go the 3dfx V 5500 route and put the chips on the same card. How bizarre.

You don't get it, do you?

PCIe isn't just a goddamn graphics port! If every other freakin' extension card can to their stuff faster, it'll improve the performance too! Alone for the reason that every device can burst, because each PCIe channel is a dedicated link. Unless, you're OK that your soundcard keeps your IDE controller and NIC from bursting, hell even your USB controller interferes on the PCI bus (which is SHARED), which would just increase wait times, extend spinlocks in the port drivers, eat CPU cycles that could be wasted elsewhere, which would be the case currently. And let's not mention the exclusive locks a device driver can hold on the PCI bus, up to 64 clock cycles, which seems to have become a habit anyway under driver programmers anyway.

And before you spout off like "OMG I just have a graphics card, the rest is on board!", guess to what bus these onboard devices are hooked up!

So how long until TripleDES snaps and starts putting up timing graphs and quoting circuit design theory?

Edit:  The portion on Bus Mastering I/O vs. Switched I/O should be enlightening.  I''l be sure to bring popcorn :)

Not going to snap. I've said my stuff now. Trying to push the discussion further will likely end up in a nitpicking contest, and I'm not up for something like that this weekend.

I don't know what the fuck you just said, but you touched a brother's heart!

/tear

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