What is PCI-E, PCI & PCI-X?

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Product Description

What is PCI ?

PCI uses a shared bus topology to allow for communication among the different devices on the bus i.e. the different PCI devices are attached to the same bus, and share the bandwidth.

It can run at clock speeds of 33 or 66 MHz. At 32 bits and 33 MHz, it will yield a throughput rate of 133 MBps which is too slow to cater for the latest frame grabbers especially as even this is shared with other PCI devices. At least 3 or 4 PCI connectors are generally present on motherboards and can generally be recognised by their standardised white colour.

The PCI interface exists in 32 bits with a 124-pin connector, or in 64 bits with a 188-pin connector.

What is PCI-X ?

PCI-X stands for PCI Extended.   The PCI-X spec essentially doubled the bus width from 32 bits to 64 bits, thereby increasing bandwidth. The PCI's basic clock rate is increased to 66MHz with a 133MHz variety on the high end, providing another boost to the bandwidth and bringing it up to 1GB/s (at 133MHz).

What is PCI-E ?

PCI-E stands for PCI Express and is also known as 3GIO (Third Generation I/O).
The PCI-E bus isn't just faster and capable of handling more bandwidth than PCI, PCI-Express is a point-to-point system, which allows for better performance.  In a point-to-point bus topology, a shared switch replaces the shared bus as the single shared resource by means of which all of the devices communicate. Unlike in a shared bus topology, where the devices must collectively arbitrate among themselves for use of the bus, each device in the system has direct and exclusive access to the switch.

The connections between the devices and the switch is called a link and each link is consists of a number of lanes. Each lane is able to carry data in both directions. The gain in bandwidth is considerable as each lane can carry 2.5Gps in each direction. It's also scalable. A basic PCI-Express slot will be a 1x connection. This will provide enough bandwidth for high-speed Internet connections and other peripherals. The 1x means that there is one lane to carry data. If a component requires more bandwidth, then there are further versions of the PCI-Express 2x, 4x, 8x, and 16x slots, adding more lanes and allowing the system to carry more data through the connection.
Note: The PCI-E slot and connectors are different lengths for each version.
PCI Express connectors are not compatible with older PCI connectors.

x1.png The PCI Express 1X connector has 36 pins
x4.png The PCI Express 4X connector has 64 pins
x8.png The PCI Express 8X connector has 98 pins

x16.png

 The PCI Express 16X connector has 164 pins

Common Buses and their Maximum Bandwidth
PCI 32 bit / 33Mhz 132 MB/s
PCI 64 bit / 66 MHz 533 MB/s
PCI-X 64 bit / 66 MHz 533 MB/s
PCI-X 64 bit / 100 MHz 800 MB/s
PCI-X 64 bit / 133 MHz 1066 MB/s

PCI Express 1x 250 MB/s 500 MB/s
PCI Express 2x 500 MB/s 1 GB/s
PCI Express 4x 1000 MB/s  2 GB/s (XtremeRGB)
PCI Express 8x 2000 MB/s  4 GB/s
PCI Express 16x 4000 MB/s 8 GB/s
PCI Express 32x 8000 MB/s  16 GB/s

USB 1.0/1.1 1.5 MB/s
USB 2.0 480 MB/s

IDE (ATA100) 100 MB/s
IDE (ATA133) 133 MB/s
SATA 150 MB/s
Gigabit Ethernet 125 MB/s
IEEE1394B [Firewire] 100 MB/s

 

 

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