PCI Express Transfer Rate Set to Double
 

The PCI-SIG, the Special Interest Group responsible for PCI Express architecture, announced that the data rate for the next planned revision of the PCI Express specification will be 5GHz, which is two times higher compared to today’s 2.50GHz speed. The new spec will be finalized in the second half of 2005 with actual products shipping in 2007.


The PCI-SIG board of directors considered market requirements and technical analysis of a range of data rates to obtain the most feasible, highest performance, backward compatible solution within the current PCI Express ecosystem, the company’s statement said. Platform implementation cost, high-volume manufacturability, system topologies, validation and interoperability were the key considerations studied by the PCI-SIG board members in the process to extend the PCI Express data rate to 5GT/s (billions of transfers per second).

more @ http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/d...216035852.html


do note that almost all PCI-E graphics cards, today, need only 4x PCI-E to work at their best;)