Plans for AMD boards with PCIE 3.0?

[conscript]

Am I alone in finding it a little strange, that it appears the AMD 7XXX video card series is scheduled to launch in Q4 (reported to be PCIE 3.0), and AMD's new breakthru CPU is launching any week/month, and not a single motherboard offered right now is PCIE 3.0 compatible?

My google skills might be weak, but I haven't had any luck finding any roadmap info. Anyone see anything, know anything, want to make up anything?

 

[Pieter3dnow]

It can be compatible with specs and thus say PCI-E 3.0 without using any of the feature set

 

[~CS~]

PCI-e 3 as of today is totally useless to gamers,it's just a checkpoint on a marketing spreadsheet.

 

[conscript]

PCI-e 3 as of today is totally useless to gamers,it's just a checkpoint on a marketing spreadsheet.

right...but not my question. Besides, I've been through too many tech advances and heard too many people say something is useless, only to have the coin flip a year out. Examples are limitless.

 

[thesecond]

right...but not my question. Besides, I've been through too many tech advances and heard too many people say something is useless, only to have the coin flip a year out. Examples are limitless.

how about this: the ati 7xxx series have to be more than double the bandwidth of the 6xxx series cards to saturate pcie 2.0 16x. You probably will not be seeing any advantage of using pcie 3.0 over pcie 2.0 in the next generation of cards unless they can make that unlikely jump.

I'll bet that the only technology that will likely be able to utilize that bandwidth in the next year will be enterprise level SSD's, and maybe enterprise level RAID controllers.

 

[JMccovery]

Am I alone in finding it a little strange, that it appears the AMD 7XXX video card series is scheduled to launch in Q4 (reported to be PCIE 3.0), and AMD's new breakthru CPU is launching any week/month, and not a single motherboard offered right now is PCIE 3.0 compatible?

My google skills might be weak, but I haven't had any luck finding any roadmap info. Anyone see anything, know anything, want to make up anything?

AMD systems won't utilize PCI-E 3.0 until next year, when FM2 (Komodo/Trinity), C2012 (Sepang), and G2012 (Terramar) launch.

It is looking like FM2 will be similar to FM1, with only 16 PCI-E lanes integrated into the CPU. C2012 and G2012 may have up to 32 integrated PCI-E lanes.

 

[woodscomp]

This always blows me away when we are on the verge of new standards and hardware etc.. There are people in both camps. And both are right to a degree. At first PCI-E 3.0 might not be all that we think it is going to be till developers actually know how all the pieces are going to work together and can properly develop the hardware and drivers to function at there fullest.

I distinctly remember going from PCI to AGP to AGP 2.0 which none of these were backwards compatible some AGP 1 devices would work on 2.0 but it was a crap shoot and not too many did. Then we fast forward to PCI-E and it was going to take over the world and allow us 30-40% better graphics data flow. It was better but was quickly replaced with PCI-E 2.0 and the two really were not that much different. By todays standards PCI-E is much better than AGP, but hey the hardware has changed significantly too. We rarely had to provide the video card with it's own power source and now that's almost standard going anywhere above $200 in price.

I wouldn't quip about the new standard, trying fool proof in the PC world is foolish in itself. Unless all the pieces are there to fully run the new standard CPU/Video Card/Motherboard I certainly would not spend extra just to get part of the equation as you will most likely never fill the gaps on that system down the road. Because when the time comes that PCI-E 3.0 is in full swing there will be better everything tempting you change platforms and will most likely end up replacing all of it anyways. Or the fact that whatever you have today will be able to run games for the next two to three years satisfactorily.

The other real issue with this is that most people are still only using a 24" or under single monitor in 1980 X1200 or less resolution. Even if the technology was widely available today you could not visibly tell the difference between a 2.0 and a 3.0 system looking at them side by side. Most any card today can make good use of that and it does not take a $400-$700 card to drive it.

 

[TheoM]

Hi,

I think we are going to see developments regarding PCIe 3.0 around March 2012. Right now there is NO platform supporting PCIe 3.0. Even the newest z68 mobos that say that support it, they don't really support it (they are ready for it) since the PCIe 3.0 controller will be embedded on the new Ivy Bridge processors and NOT on the mobo. In other words even if you buy those mobos you will still have to upgrade the processor in March to have PCIe 3.0 support (clever ha?)

I haven't heard anything from the AMD camp about PCIe 3.0. So if you are not absolutely desperate to upgrade i would suggest to wait till march 2012 as I will do.

No matter what people say about PCIe 3.0 not being useful, I will not spend 1000 Euros upgrading my PC NOW, knowing that in 3 months time PCIe 3.0 is gonna come out....

 

[sirmonkey1985]

This always blows me away when we are on the verge of new standards and hardware etc.. There are people in both camps. And both are right to a degree. At first PCI-E 3.0 might not be all that we think it is going to be till developers actually know how all the pieces are going to work together and can properly develop the hardware and drivers to function at there fullest.

I distinctly remember going from PCI to AGP to AGP 2.0 which none of these were backwards compatible some AGP 1 devices would work on 2.0 but it was a crap shoot and not too many did. Then we fast forward to PCI-E and it was going to take over the world and allow us 30-40% better graphics data flow. It was better but was quickly replaced with PCI-E 2.0 and the two really were not that much different. By todays standards PCI-E is much better than AGP, but hey the hardware has changed significantly too. We rarely had to provide the video card with it's own power source and now that's almost standard going anywhere above $200 in price.

I wouldn't quip about the new standard, trying fool proof in the PC world is foolish in itself. Unless all the pieces are there to fully run the new standard CPU/Video Card/Motherboard I certainly would not spend extra just to get part of the equation as you will most likely never fill the gaps on that system down the road. Because when the time comes that PCI-E 3.0 is in full swing there will be better everything tempting you change platforms and will most likely end up replacing all of it anyways. Or the fact that whatever you have today will be able to run games for the next two to three years satisfactorily.

The other real issue with this is that most people are still only using a 24" or under single monitor in 1980 X1200 or less resolution. Even if the technology was widely available today you could not visibly tell the difference between a 2.0 and a 3.0 system looking at them side by side. Most any card today can make good use of that and it does not take a $400-$700 card to drive it.

nailed it on the head in every way, nice post.