Expansion Cards Part 3: PCI Express

In the first two installments of this series of Tech Tips, we took a look at PCI and AGP, undoubtedly the most common expansion slots in a computer today. With a few key improvements over both of these, PCI Express is destined to replace both and offer a whole new level of computer performance.

PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG)As with AGP and PCI, the development of PCI Express can be attributed to Intel. This time, however, they partnered with some other heavy hitters in the industry, such as Microsoft, IBM, and Dell. Although it is now known as PCI Express, that was not their initial choice for its name. If it wasn't for PCI-SIG, the committee that oversees the PCI standard, we might be referring to this new format at 3GIO (Third GenerationInput / Output).

PCI Express development finds its roots in the PCI and AGP standards, but the physical connections are not interchangeable, and we will see that this is not the only difference. In the PCI standard, data from the various devices travels over a shared bus to the system. In the AGP standard, a dedicated, point-to-point interface transmits the data from the graphics card to the system. The PCI Express approach to data transfer involves a collection of two-way, serial connections that carries data in packets, similar to the way a network connection operates.

The data from a PCI Express device will no longer have to travel over a single bus, or a single dedicated connection, but can use a combination of these two-way serial connections to optimize throughput. The terms "lane" and "link" don't sound like anything overly technical, but take on special meaning with PCI Express. A link is the physical connection between PCI Express devices, which can consist of multiple lanes that transmit and receive data independently. Links can be composed of 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, or 32 lanes, and the configuration allows flexibility in assigning just as many lanes as needed to any particular device. There are obvious benefits to this approach, and a few of the more significant include the following points?

Each lane of PCI Express communication is dedicated between two points, so there is no sharing of bandwidth. PCI's main bottleneck was that all the devices were sharing the equivalent of one lane, and all of the available bandwidth also had to be shared.

Multiple lanes can be assigned to devices whose performance would benefit from the extra speed and bandwidth. A PCI Express graphics card might be assigned 16 lanes (also referred to as x16), while a network adaptor might be assigned just 1 lane. Each lane you make available to a device increases the potential for performance, as the data is sequenced up/down each available lane to optimize throughput. This process of sending the next byte of data down the next available lane is referred to as data striping, and obviously more lanes are better for instances where a good deal of data needs to be transmitted quickly.

Speaking of graphics cards, another benefit is that multiple high performance graphics cards can be installed on one motherboard. The flexibility of PCI Express allows for two x16 PCI Express slots to be included for dual graphics cards, something that in the past required one AGP slot and one PCI slot. And due to the performance limitations, the AGP and PCI combination could not really be considered high performance. In addition to two x16 slots allowing for dual display operation, when incorporating specific graphics cards on a motherboard supporting nVidia's SLi technology, the resources of the two separate cards can be bridged together for even greater performance on one display. An example of such a motherboard can be seen in DFI's LAN Party UT nF4 SLi-D.

Just as motherboards supported both AGP and PCI as a means of allowing dual displays, some motherboards offer both an AGP slot and a PCI Express slot. Not only does this allow the user the ability to run dual displays, it provides the added benefit of allowing an upgrade to be completed in stages. If a new PCI Express capable motherboard was just purchased, perhaps in addition to a new processor, the budget conscience user may not want to spring for a new graphics card right away. By making an AGP slot available on boards such as the ECS 915P-A, there is no reason to retire a perfectly good AGP card just because one bought a new motherboard supporting PCI Express.

PCI Express graphics cards are quite similar to AGP cards, except for the connector co