As notebooks are becoming more popular, you may ask and legitimately so what will be done with them to increase bandwidth, as portable systems have traditionally had even less bandwidth than even entry-level desktops. The organization that creates the PCMCIA standard has introduced a new card with pluggable connections to either a USB 2.0 connection or a PCI-E connection, depending on card need. For instance, a media reader might do best on USB 2.0 whereas a TV Tuner or extra graphics card for presentations would do better on a PCI-E connection.
By now you may be saying, PCI-E sounds well and good, but how does it affect me? There aren’t any PCI-E expansion cards available, so why should I care? Well, it is true that there are very, very few PCI-E cards available now. However, Creative Labs is due to launch a PCI-E based sound card, several companies are investigating hardware RAID 5 SATA controllers and eventually everything that you now use a PCI card for will be PCI-E. With the holiday season coming up, you can expect a massive number of products to enter the market quickly before Christmas to make your PCI-E enabled motherboard worthwhile, including new PCI-E boards for the AMD processors in addition to the current Via chipset.
The current chipsets supporting PCI-Express are the following: Intel 925X, Intel 915G, Intel 915GV, Intel 915GL, Intel 915P and the Intel 910GL. All of these are Intel chipsets with various features accepting the Socket T chips. However, within the next two months more chipsets and boards based on them should become available very quickly. The Intel 925XE will come out supporting a 1066 MHz bus, otherwise it is identical to the 925X. ATi has an integrated video chipset launching, the RX480, which supports PCI-E. Via is launching the K8T890 AMD K8 chipset supporting PCI-E. The other PCI-E is chipset for AMD coming to market quickly is from nVidia in the form of the nForce4 series, with the nForce4, nForce4 Ultra and nForce4 SLI.
Conclusion
PCI Express is the first major upgrade to desktop PC expansion since the days of the 486, and purchasing a system without it now would be foolish. I would definitely suggest to anyone purchasing a new motherboard to not even bother unless it’s PCI Express capable. While I realize that only a handful of chipsets today are PCI Express capable, it’s the difference between a PC potentially lasting up to five or more years and a PC lasting one or, at a stretch, two years. So for all of those (like me) who do not own a money tree and have the capability to replace their motherboard every year should only consider a PCI-E board.
