PCI:Express Lifespan??

B

BlastRadius

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 12, 2004
Messages
187
Hey all,

I have finally admitted defeat and am planning to upgrade within the next few months. I currently do not have a PCI:E mobo so I will have to fork out for all new gear.

With that in mind I just got to thinking about the short lifespan that computer components seem to have these days. Yes of course I want to stay completley up to date, but when I build a system I expect it to last one year as native and then another with upgrades.

All this scared me when it came to PCI:E and accompanying mobo and GPU. Just how long is the shelflife for this? any linkage to articles would be great.

Maybe this shoulda gone into the motherboard forum, but it is the cost of a top end PCI:E GPU that is worrying me if PCI:E only has a short shelf life.

Thanks for any repiles in advance. ;)
 
i certainly hope not, seems kind of stupid to come out with a new slot type after like an year. how long did agp last
 
Well AGP is at least 10 years old and PCI is even older then that. So I think it's safe to say that PCIe will prolly be around for some time to come...

+UPDATE+

The first AGP motherboard was a 440LX Pentium II chipset in August,1997 so it's more like 8 years ago... I still think if you buy a pcie system today that your system will become outdated before something new comes along...
 
PCI-E 1.1 is supposed to be out within a year. It's the same slot with timing enhancements to make it easier to comply.

AGP lasted 8 years with 3 major tweaks, and AGP was based on PCI which is 5 years older than that. Nothing stays frozen if that's what you want. PCI-E will probably evolve and maintain as much backwards compatibility. IOW, PCI-E will probably be around for a while.
 
PCI-e should be around for a long enough time that you will look to build another computer before it goes out of date
 
yeah If I buy a PCI-E card next week (as planned) and they change something within the next two years - I'm buying a dang XBOX 360 :)
 
seanmcd said:
yeah If I buy a PCI-E card next week (as planned) and they change something within the next two years - I'm buying a dang XBOX 360 :)
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yeah like the XBOX 360 will never go out of date :p
 
AGP = tweaked PCI
and PCI is over 10 years old.

PCIe is a major change, like PCI took over ISA.

AGP had a few higher speed revisions since they didn't plan enough bandwidth in to PCI initially. And you can still use old AGP 1x/2x/4x cards in an 8x AGP slot. So your videocard should last even if they tweak the PCIe 16x for more speed later.

I think with PCIe they planned it correctly from the beginning, being scalable from 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x. Its got a lot of room for growth. And the physical slot size and # of pins will NOT change anytime soon. If anything they MIGHT play around with timings, latency, etc.... But with the current overhead still available there's NO reason to change much.

I would think PCIe slots will be around for AT LEAST 5 years.

Though I have a feeling down the road there may be some newer smaller versions of the slots for mini pc's. Kinda like Nvidia's MXM(I think) PCIe slot for laptop videocards & mini PCI for laptops (& sodimms, etc). There should be some miniturized versions so people can all have PC's smaller than an average phone book.
 
Just how long is the shelflife for this? any linkage to articles would be great.
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Let me just break out my time machine, jump to about 2013, and I'll let you know if they still make PCI-E stuff. (what article could you be referring to that would give the exact shelf life of PCI-E? Did they do that with AGP, saying in 1997 that PCI-E would be out in 2004 so don't bother? Is the Illuminati releasing information like this early these days?)

Really tho, I don't think Intel or anyone knows how long PCI-E will last. You do have the reassurance that PCI-E is recognized as a good thing in the industry and companies will probably make hardware for it for long enough that you won't need to concern yourself.

Also, I'm not quite sure if anyone has told you, but AGP hasn't disappeared. Last time I checked, my AGP-based motherboard still worked, and no PC gnomes came in the middle of the night and made my AGP bus stop working. Unless you are on the bleeding edge and need a high-end "PCI-E only" videocard, you CAN still get fully functional and usable videocards now that are AGP.
 
At least 5 years with x16 (if you're planning on gaming). Way beyond that if just for 2D stuff. :)
 
1c3d0g said:
At least 5 years with x16 (if you're planning on gaming). Way beyond that if just for 2D stuff. :)
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how do you figure? AGP came out in ~98. its been 7 years, and we just saturated the 4x bus. id say PCIe x16 has a bit more life in it than that.

edit: it seems it was out in late 97, so im about right :p
And you can still use old AGP 1x/2x/4x cards in an 8x AGP slot.
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no, you cant. only 4x/8x will fit in an 8x slot. only universal 1x/2x/4x can take all of those, 1x/2x has 3.3v voltage signaling and is keyed differently.

edit: it seems it was out in late 97, so im about right :p

AGP = tweaked PCI
Click to expand...
majorly tweaked PCI. AGP never would have overtaken PCI without GART, and it never would have lasted this long without GART. that technology was HUGE.
 
Best guess? We haven't heard about PCI-E's successor yet, so it's at least a year away :D Beyond that, none of us can comment authoritatively.

PCI/AGP did indeed last quite some time. My best guess is that PCI-E will have a run of at least five good years.
 
PCI-eXXXtreme! technology is coming out next year for AMD motherboards. Or maybe that was a new snowboarding game.
 
SuperSubZero said:
Let me just break out my time machine, jump to about 2013, and I'll let you know if they still make PCI-E stuff. (what article could you be referring to that would give the exact shelf life of PCI-E? Did they do that with AGP, saying in 1997 that PCI-E would be out in 2004 so don't bother? Is the Illuminati releasing information like this early these days?)

Really tho, I don't think Intel or anyone knows how long PCI-E will last. You do have the reassurance that PCI-E is recognized as a good thing in the industry and companies will probably make hardware for it for long enough that you won't need to concern yourself.

Also, I'm not quite sure if anyone has told you, but AGP hasn't disappeared. Last time I checked, my AGP-based motherboard still worked, and no PC gnomes came in the middle of the night and made my AGP bus stop working. Unless you are on the bleeding edge and need a high-end "PCI-E only" videocard, you CAN still get fully functional and usable videocards now that are AGP.
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Lol, had just been reading the articles about the R520 ceasing it's production run soon in favour of a newer release. This is a trend which is escalating and while good for performance it is bad for longevity.

I know AGP isn't dead and have strongly refuted this in the past. But with neither ATI or Nvidia set to bring their latest chips to AGP I need PCI:E for the next upgrade.

It may be a blessing in disguise for me because I need a new machine to serve my Debian content :)
 
I know of a new pci-e coming otu at some point which I can only imagine is similar to AGP's 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 like system (extra bandwidth) but maybe also extra power supplied. I'm sure there is information floating round
 
BlastRadius said:
...when I build a system I expect it to last one year as native and then another with upgrades.

...Just how long is the shelflife for this (PCI-E)?
Click to expand...

Well, you ask how long the shelf life will be, yet you also mention that you will upgrade your entire system in about 2-3 years.

Don't worry then, in 3-5 years we will still use the same X16 PCI-E slot for graphics. If anything, they will figure a way of having two video cards running at X16 at the same time (currently, the speed gets knocked to x8 each slot when you have an SLI setup).

There MAY be a change in the X1 and X4 (has anyone seen any of these?) slots since no-one is using them (like someone said in a post above, maybe make it more compatible with laptos or small form factors). But the PCI-E X16 slot is the new graphics standard and companies like NVIDIA (not so much ATI) make their living out of video cards, so they will keep it alive for the forseeable future. Thus, the worst thing that could happen is another 'phase-out' like we just saw with AGP, but even this will not happen for your next one or two computer upgrades.
 
Its all about marketing, AGP's bandwidth isn't even fully used, they could make the X1800XT/G7800GTX in AGP if the demand was there, but it cost more. So they figure, PCI-E is a cheaper so lets just make everyone go that route.

If you look, ASUS has already been looking into PCI-E 32x SLI. So yes, PCI-E is planned to stay around, but GPU's will surpass your setup and you will still have to upgrade either way.

You see this with CPU's all the time, always changing sockets, Intel maybe had 2 years on Socket 478, then moved to LGA775, and in a year are going to be having another socket probably with DDR3 support. Amd will be moving from DDR1/S939 to DDR2/M2 support soon too.
 
Ozone77 said:
If anything, they will figure a way of having two video cards running at X16 at the same time (currently, the speed gets knocked to x8 each slot when you have an SLI setup).
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Uhm, we already have this...

The new Intel boards with the NF4 chipset have two 16X PCI-e slots that run at 16X.
 
thefordmccord said:
Uhm, we already have this...

The new Intel boards with the NF4 chipset have two 16X PCI-e slots that run at 16X.
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Yes, but does Nvidia drivers support this yet? And did you hear about that Mobo with 4 PCI-e slots to support dual SLI?

In any case, like Lithium said we are just now topping AGP 4X speeds, It will be a while until PCI-e 16X (is that twice as fast as AGP 8X? don't remember right now) is not fast enough and the industry develops a new graphics slot.
 
PCI Express is very modular and can be expanded upon. Like the above poster said, there are now boards that have 40 PCI Express channels. Which is enough for two x16 slots and 8 channels leftover to distribute as necessary.

I believe there is as an x32 PCI Express slot defined in the specifications but not current implemented. Its been a while since I looked at them.

EDIT: Yeah I looked in the PCISIG white paper for PCI Express, x32 is indeed specified but I dont know of anything using it yet.
 
Why does everyone act like they know what they are talking about saying if AGP bus is saturated or not, they dont

One person says something on a random message board and everyone takes it as true
 
Ozone77 said:
Yes, but does Nvidia drivers support this yet? And did you hear about that Mobo with 4 PCI-e slots to support dual SLI?

In any case, like Lithium said we are just now topping AGP 4X speeds, It will be a while until PCI-e 16X (is that twice as fast as AGP 8X? don't remember right now) is not fast enough and the industry develops a new graphics slot.
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Get out the cave. 2 x PCIe 16x slots is old news.

Nforce4 has an Intel & AMD version with 2 x 16. And ATI is working on its 2 x 16x boards.

And the Gigabyte board you're referring to will have 4 PCIe 16x SLOTS, but the bandwidth will be either 2 x PCIe 16x OR 4 x PCIe 8x slots. IT WILL NOT HAVE 4 x PCIe 16x.
 
The reason people get bent out of shape on saturation of AGP compared to PCIe is because AGP was for graphics only and therefore that is where their viewpoints sits. PCIe is not only for grahics, but graphics and EVERYTHING else. But convincing them to get over than mindset is nearly impossible.

Remember, 2D grpahics should be good enough...why do 3D. Heck, do it all on a CPU while you are at it :D

-tReP
 
Why does everyone act like they know what they are talking about saying if AGP bus is saturated or not, they dont
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Well, until the 6xxx series card the AGP bus wasnt saturated.
Dont know about the latest series' of cards though...but wtf cares, they only come in PCI-E anyway, so it doesnt really matter, does it?
 
wahoyaho said:
i certainly hope not, seems kind of stupid to come out with a new slot type after like an year. how long did agp last
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Umm, i upgraded from ISA to VLB, and the card only lasted a year, from 1993 to 1994, then the PCI cards came :(

So VLB was a one year'er, which is also why i havent upgraded to PCI-E yet, still using AGP, waiting to see if PCI-E lasts before upgrading as i really dont need to upgrade just yet.
 
MindBuster said:
Umm, i upgraded from ISA to VLB, and the card only lasted a year, from 1993 to 1994, then the PCI cards came :(

So VLB was a one year'er, which is also why i havent upgraded to PCI-E yet, still using AGP, waiting to see if PCI-E lasts before upgrading as i really dont need to upgrade just yet.
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WTF is VLB!?!

Did you get an RDRAM motherboard too! :p LOL
 
hmmm wrong i think. according to amd and intel roadmaps, mid 2007 is the year of ddr3, and pcie gen2.
f
 
freddiepm61 said:
hmmm wrong i think. according to amd and intel roadmaps, mid 2007 is the year of ddr3, and pcie gen2.
f
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Correct, however I don't see how this detracts from my point (you may notice from links I've already posted that pci-e 2 is a bandwidth boost and a few other things that don't interest me right now)
 
I expect PCI-e will be around for quite some time. Unlike the busses that came before it (ISA, EISA, MCA, VLB, and PCI), PCI-e isn't actually a bus. It's a "star" or "home run" architecture. It's like comparing coaxial ethernet to cat-5. In all the previous busses, the cards all connected to the same wires and shared the available bandwidth. If one card could only do 33MHz, all the cards on that bus were stuck at 33MHz. With PCI-e, bandwidth is not shared. You have X number of "lanes" on the northbridge, and the number of lanes attached determines how fast a PCI-e slot is. 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, or 16x. This makes it fairly easy to ramp up the clock rate compared to PCI. You just need a setup where each lane can run at a different speed.
 
Trepidati0n said:
PCIe is not only for grahics, but graphics and EVERYTHING else. But convincing them to get over than mindset is nearly impossible.

Remember, 2D grpahics should be good enough...why do 3D. Heck, do it all on a CPU while you are at it :D

-tReP
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Sure, you are right, PCIe is for everything, only that I can still not find a network card or a sound card for PCIe yet (and I could use both). And since I am not interested in a RAID rig, the only thing left for me to buy is a video card :(
Don't ask me to spend money on a (good) PCI soundcard or network card, unlike videocards, you can actually take these from one rig to the next. I want PCIe everything.
 
MindBuster said:
Umm, i upgraded from ISA to VLB, and the card only lasted a year, from 1993 to 1994, then the PCI cards came :(

So VLB was a one year'er, which is also why i havent upgraded to PCI-E yet, still using AGP, waiting to see if PCI-E lasts before upgrading as i really dont need to upgrade just yet.
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What if you wait for it, buy PCI-Express, and then it only lasts another year? Personally, I wouldn't trust anything called VLB.
 
 
PCIE gen II is mentioned on some of the AMD roadmaps...
along with socket M2 and DDRII
 
PCIE gen II is mentioned on some of the AMD roadmaps..
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Exactly.Honestly,i m fed up with them blackmailing us every year with new standards.I ll stay with my current upgrade for as long as i can.


annone.jpg
 
LOL ^^^

Oh noes! PCI-E is going to have a revision in 2007 after being released in 2004. Good thing AGP 1.0 stuck around and was never messed with to this day. Boycott socket M2 next year. Never buy a 24-pin PSU. The protest can continue forever...

But seriously, it will probably be backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.0a (current) and 1.1 (next year, minor timing tweaks). Regular PCI (i know, not the same other than also being invented by Intel) has gone through 4 revisions pretty transparently.
 
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