Why pcie 3.0

But what exactly is PCI Express 3. PCI Express, or Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, is a high-speed bus standard, and it was developed to replace the older and slower standards. The most common use for the standard is as a slot in laptops, in which you can put PCI Express cards.

Commonly, PCIe is used for graphics cards and other gaming peripherals. PCIe 3. In other words, the differences between the two are more evolutionary than revolutionary. The slot, for example, is exactly the same, and is, in fact, backwards compatible — meaning you can plug PCIe 2.

As mentioned, PCIe 3. How much so? Well, while the peak speed of a PCIe 2. The first PCIe 5. So, PCIe 5. We don't expect to see products until at least the end of , if not PCIe 6. This article is part of the Tom's Hardware Glossary. Scharon Harding has a special affinity for gaming peripherals especially monitors , laptops and virtual reality. Previously, she covered business technology, including hardware, software, cyber security, cloud and other IT happenings, at Channelnomics, with bylines at CRN UK.

Scharon Harding. The table below summarizes the throughput rate speed of x1, x4, x8 and x16 slot on different PCIe versions. This in return would save up 8 of your PCIe lanes! Thus, manufacturers can essentially make high performance devices that utilize fewer PCIe lanes with each consecutive upgrade in the PCIe version. Smaller devices, means lower heat production, which in turn means lower power consumption and smaller sub-components used, i.

Hence, the difference between PCIe 3. Understanding the similarities may provide some perspective into how the PCIe interface works.

This could help you with your PC builds. PCIe slots, no matter the generation, have the same size and physical shape. The motherboard above shows two PCIe x16 v2. As far as the physical size goes, the x1 and x16 slots conforming to PCIe v3. Their connectors on both the expansion devices and the slots are physically similar. This means that if you have a motherboard that is running the older generation PCIe 2.

The only problem will be that the device and the slot work at the speeds of the least powerful of the two. So in this case, if you were to install a PCIe 3. Often expansion cards do not saturate the entire bandwidth of the PCIe slots. This is far lower than the bandwidth of a single PCIe 3. Hence a card like this would not even saturate a single lane. This brings us to the next important point, cross compatibility.

While PCIe 2. This means that a PCIe 3. Similarly, a PCIe 2. Unfortunately this brings us to another point: underutilization vs bottleneck. While it is true that PCIe slots and devices are cross compatible, it is not the efficient way to build your system. If you install a high performance PCIe 3.