PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 - Everything you Need to Know As Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2013-05-07
·
670 words · ~3 min read
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I get a lot of questions about PCI Express what works with what what
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doesn't work with what what are the different Generations what does it all
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mean so today we're going to tell you everything you need to know about PCI
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Express 3.0 as fast as possible so let's start with the very Basics PCI Express
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is the interface that is used to plug modern expansion Cards into modern
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computers or motherboards it completely replaced PCI and AGP which is great
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because AGP was only for graphics cards and PCI had to be used for pretty much
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everything else PC Express works with pretty much anything sound cards network
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cards raid cards video cards they'll all pretty much fit as long as you're aware
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of a few simple guidelines now I said they're Universal but PCI Express slots
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are available in a variety of different physical configurations the most common
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ones are 1X 4X 8X and 16x all of these
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types have different slots on the cards themselves and different slots on the
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motherboard the cool part about that is that they're uper and downwards
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compatible though here I am plugging a PCI Express 1X card into a 16x slot it
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gets the same power delivery it just gets less bandwidth delivered to it
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because that's all a sound card actually needs and not only that but I can take
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this PCIe 8X raid card and plug it into a PCIe 4X slot it'll still work but it
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will only have half of the bandwidth available to it that it would have
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otherwise had if you plugged it into an 8X slot the other thing that affects the
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performance of PCI Express is the generation here I'm holding a PCI Express
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generation 2 16x card and here I'm holding a PCI Express Generation 3 16x
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card they look physically the same on the connectors but the actual available
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bandwidth has doubled in fact the available bandwidth of PCI Express cards
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has doubled with each generation so a PCI Express Generation 1 16x slot is
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only equivalent in performance to a PCI Express Generation 3 4X slot so the
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takeaways from this are pretty straightforward PCI Express cards work
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in PCI Express slots as long as there's nothing physically in the way
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performance on the other hand is going to be dictated by what generation of PCI
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Express the card and the slaughter running at so it'll run at whatever is
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the lowest generation of either the two components so Gen 2 card gen 3 slot plug
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them together they run at gen two and then performance is also determined by
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the length of the card and the length of the slot so for example this quad Port
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gigabit Nick needs at least 500 megabytes per second of bandwidth in
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order to operate at Peak efficiency that means if I have an older PCIe gen 1
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motherboard I'll need at least a 4X slot or a hypothetical 2x slot to get the
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bandwidth I need because it's only 250 megabytes per second in a 1x slot
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however if I have a PCI Express Gen 2 motherboard I could even use a 1x slot
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to get everything I need because that'll be about 500 megabytes per
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you next time