The graphics cards of today use the PCI Express standard for interfacing with our computers and the current specification is PCI-Express 2.0. As it turns out out, the new specification PCI-Express 3.0, which was presented in August 2007, will be delayed. It was supposed to be finalized this year already but PCI SIG has now announced that the work of ensuring full backward compatibility and the new functions of PCI-Express 3.0 has taken longer than expected. The new specification is now not expected to be cleared until Q2 2010.
This means that products based on PCI-Express 3.0 will most likely no be available until 2011, confirmed by PCI SIG.
PCI-Express 3.0 will offer lower power consumption and higher data transfer rates with up to 8GT/s bit rate (gigatransfers), which double that of the effective bandwidth of PCI-Express 2.0.
Whether higher transfer rates are actually needed when the new interface appears remains to be seen, but with product launches as late as 2011 we might be dealing with DirectX 12 graphics cards, raytracing and such, where bandwidth may be much needed. We will just have to wait and see.
Motherboard med PCI-Express 2.0 slots
