micha_bravo
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# Posted: 4 Jun 2006 09:32
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The PCI Express and my video card
OVERVIEW:
Due to a recent technical difficulty (IE: My video card blowing up), I was forced to consider the options of replacing it. For the record, my video card is an AGP (Advanced Graphics Port) Video card, which of course plugs into an AGP port. The AGP form factor is probably the most common form for video cards implemented on systems today. However, there is a new monster on the horizon, a monster called PCI Express. This technology has been around for a bit, but is now becomming the new "black" when building a system.
As some of you may remember, PCI bus ports were once a common hosting ground for the graphics card, until a time when the graphics cards themselves became a power-hungry and bandwith hungry demon all of it's own, requiring a more dedicated bus to serve it's needs. Hence, the AGP port and card was born. Now with PCI Express taking over and almost all of the new top-end graphics cards being released on this form-factor, I have a dilemma on my hands: Buy another AGP video card or go with the new PCI Express models. It sounds like it might be an easy decision; If almost all of the new top end video cards are being released for PCI Express then it must be the bomb-digity and the way to go.
An easy decision indeed... OK, it's not so easy and in fact there are several things that you have to know and understand about PCI Express before making a decision. That's where this article comes into play here at the Outpost. I, your tech guru, have been slacking as of late I'm afraid. I haven't kept up on my geeky duties of studying and learning the new technologies out there and I, perhaps like most of you, am at a bit of a loss when it comes to PCI Express. So I have decided to write this article to help you AND me understand the technology a bit better. I promise that this will be a simple document for anyone to read, I will not get into all of the technical aspects but will simply state the facts in laymans terms so that we can all decide to updgrade now or later. I say make the decision to upgrade now or later as opposed to upgrade at all, because one thing is for sure, the PCI Express slot is here for good (good as in ISA bus good, meaning good until something better comes along).
SOME TECHNICAL JUNK:
From a technical standpoint, PCI Express will offer much higher data transfer rates than the AGP port and is coming out of the gate 2x as fast as AGP. PCI Express is designed to be very flexible, highly scalable, and cheaper than AGP as well as the older PCI ports. It will offer devices the opportunity to communicate directly with each other instead of having to go through a processing chip for direction in many cases. Overall it's a vastly superior technology over the PCI and AGP ports. PCI Express is designed to alleviate many of the specialized buses that have developed over the years to alleviate traffic and give higher bandwiths. So overall, this technology should reduce the cost of manufacturing and purchasing pc's in the long run. The push for PCI Express is on and many manufacturers are already making motherboards and cards for this standard. It was primarily pushed into existance due to developers wanting a faster bus than AGP, even though AGP still hasn't reached it's full potential. And as a cool side-note, the PCI Express bus has brought back the ability to run not just one but two (linked) video cards in your system for some really uber-hawt graphics capabillities.
THE ARGUMENT FOR BUYING A PCI EXPRESS VIDEO CARD:
The first thing to understand is that PCI Express is an extension of PCI but NOT the same thing. That is, PCI Express is designed on top of the current PCI form but adds new structure to it also. The PCI Express model is also built to be backwards compatable with PCI and this may confuse some people. How can PCI Express, which has new structure added, also be compatable with standard PCI?! Well it is and it isn't, on a software level, PCI Express works much like PCI, it's built differently on physical level mainly. Fortunately for us, when they designed the PCI slot, they made it to be expanded in the future, and incorporated extra space into the slot design for just such an occurance. So what the backwards compatability means is that if you use PCI cards in a PCI Express slot they will work as normal, theoretically. And this also holds true for placing PCI Express cards into a PCI slot. Of course, since PCI Express is still fairly new as far as technology is concerned, there may be some problems that arise with backwards compatability.
I mentioned PCI and PCI Express being fundamentally the same on a software level in the last paragraph which brings the thought to mind, will I have to upgrade my operating system to accomodate and use PCI Express? The answer is thankfully, no. Any OS designed to work with PCI ports should work with PCI Express cards as well. As they are theoretically the same on a software level, the cards should incorporate into any existing OS that currently supports PCI. However, as the PCI Express has not explicitly been coded into these operating systems as of yet, there may be patches and fixes made available in the future that will allow the PCI Express cards to take full advantage of the Operating System. So, if you are running say Windows, then from Windows 98+ you should be ok to run PCI Express cards without any additional updates, since the PCI bus was coded in from there on.
So theoretically a common user should be able to go out and buy a hawt new PCI Express video card and simply plug it into their current system and go to town, without the need for any additional costs or troubles. This isn't to say that there won't be any additional upgrade costs down the road since we are all going to be forced to switch to PCI Express sooner or later at which point there will be huge upgrade costs. But as of right now, to simply upgrade by adding PCI Express cards should be relatively simple.
SOME FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS:
PCI Express as mentioned above will cost you more down the road. To take full advantage of PCI Express, you will eventually have to purchase a motherboard with PCI Express slots (more money), they will in turn require new power supplies (more money), new operating systems will be built to support the PCI Express slots (more money), PCI Express cards will be built to take full advantage of the new hardware (more money), etc. Currently many of the new motherboards being released seem to have at least one PCI Express port in place of the AGP port and several standard PCI ports as well. Why not make all the PCI ports PCI Express? Well, right now it's a new technology and expensive. While manufacturers are forcing us to PCI Express to save themselves money, they don't necessarily care so much about saving us money as well. Hopefully within the next couple of years when PCI Express is fully implemented, we'll all run out and buy new motherboards and cards again which fully run on PCI Express and hence make THEM more money.
CONCLUSION:
The argument for buying myself a new PCI Express video card seems fairly simple now. I should head on down to best buy and pick one up. I could be "running and gunning" again in no time flat. But I'm not going to do that and I won't suggest you run down there either if your video card has failed. Instead, I suggest you simply pick up a cheap used AGP card on Ebay. Why? Well PCI Express is a new technology, much like my video card. It's still first generation. And you see what happened to my first generation video card that cost me nearly $500.00, plus the damn thing was always a little buggy as well. I suggest waiting until the technology has a bit more "time" under it's belt before running out and purchasing. Plus we're very close to a new upgrade cycle where the entire industry will be switching from 32-bit to 64 bit processing. The PC industry as a whole is making some big switches in the next year, and yes I realize that they always are, but this is something different. These are major implementations of new standards, not just upgrades of old ones, which will also require much capital and updating.
And while I may be very wrong about this I have a feeling that PCI Express may even be a bit like Beta-max as opposed to VHS (for you young kiddies, ask your parents), meaning there is already at least one technology that is superior but it's just a question of who pushes harder I guess. Point is, PCI Express is all the rage at the moment, as it's being heavily pushed by Intel, but which an even better technology sitting there waiting, it may be very short lived. Intel pushed Rambus memory as the new standard too, for a while, till they got their butts kicked.
And you may have noticed that I used the word, "Theortically", quite a bit throughout this story. The reason is that until PCI Express is fully implemented and supported, many of these conclusions may not work out as planned. On paper you should be able to buy a new PCI Express card, plug it in and go. In reality, you may actually have to buy a new motherboard with a PCI Express port, a new power supply, a new OS, etc to get the dang thing to work right, especially if it's one of those groovy new video cards. But we'll see soon, as they are starting to flood the market.
So what did I do you wonder? About my video card choice?! I remembered that my "top of the line, but blown up" AGP video card is still under warranty and sent it out for replacement!
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Mr. Bravo
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