What is PCI Express?
By: Aaron Guhl
What is PCI Express? To understand it, you need to know what it does first. Most computers today now come equipped with at least one PCI Express slot. Compared to an AGP 8x interface, PCI Express can allow data to be passed at speeds up to 4GB/s versus only 2GB/s. This doubles the speed that any interface card utilizing that slot is capable of.
Because of this, developers are able to take advantage of it and do things they were not able to before. Because of the speed boost that PCI Express provides over AGP, it allows developers to add more realistic content than ever imagined possible in a game. If you can imagine playing Crysis on all the very high settings, then you can see what PCI Express is capable of.
Backward compatibility is also a nice feature that PCI Express provides. Don't downplay this critical bonus. If you are upgrading from an older PCI based motherboard, you don't want to have to by all new equipment and peripherals just to take advantage of PCI Express. That can save you a lot of money in the upgrade process.
It is also not just designed for use with video processing. While its initial design focus was to enhance graphics processing, PCI Express cards can also be seen as network cards and sound cards. Expect to see many more devices taking advantage of the speed increases in the future.
If you plan of moving on to PCI Express, then you will first need to look into what motherboard you want and make sure it is PCI Express capable. As always with motherboards, you will most likely need a new processor and RAM that are compatible with it. In the future you will see more and more PCI Express cards. Be ready for them!