PCI-E 3 on LGA1155

[Slimshaedy]

We’ve just made an announcement that GIGABYTE Intel 6 Series motherboard users will pretty pleased to hear, as all these boards have received a BIOS update that ensures their compatibility with two important technologies we’re going to see in the near future – PCE Express Gen 3 and Intel’s forthcoming 22nm processors.

If you’ve treated yourself to a socket 1155 motherboard, using any Z68, P67, H67 or H61 Intel chipset, you can now rest easy in the knowledge that you’ll be able to enjoy a healthy performance bump in the near future: PCI Express Gen. 3 discrete graphics card support will bring almost twice the potential data bandwidth of the current PCIe 2.0 standard, while support for processors made by Intel’s forthcoming 22nm manufacturing process, will potentially bring a significant boost in overall CPU performance and improved energy-efficiency.

Sounds pretty good but you have to buy a new 22nm CPU. At least its staying on the lga1155 platform

[J_Bay]

You think ASUS will do the same?

[Slimshaedy]

Yes all the mobos manufacturers will do the same

[J_Bay]

So that means that if I buy my board now, and they release this patch, it'll go from having PCI - E 2.1, to PCIE - E 3.0? Which then ensures at least some future proofing? Especially if Intel is kind enough to release new generation 22nm processors on the LGA1155 socket...

[Slimshaedy]

Ya I duno when they releasing the 22nm chips but for the mobo to be compatible it just needs a BIOS upgrade... By the sounds of it. I'm not sure, but we will all find out when that day comes

[J_Bay]

lol, well at least the PCI - E 3.0 is a nice touch, I'm thinking that a 2500K should handle games for a few years so now I feel quite happy about going the Intel route!!

[StarBound]

It doesn't really future proof the board. After all all pci-e 2 devices are backwards compatible to pci-e 1 slots. But I am wondering how this is possible though. Surely PCI-E 3 has a much higher bandwidth thru put than the PCI-E 2 slot doesn't it? Isn't that a hardware aspect? Or is PCI-E 1/2/3 x16 the same speed across all generations but just extra power saving features and stuff?

[J_Bay]

I was also wondering how they can turn a 2.1 slot into a 3.0 slot...

[Slimshaedy]

I'm trying to find out details on google, now they say its being released with Sandy Bridge-E lga 2011. I thought its called Ivybridge? But its basically double the transfer rate of pcie 2. Same amount of lanes,same power output and it looks the same.

If anyone finds any interesting info could you please post a link? I didn't post my link coz it was a little paragraph...

[J_Bay]

I read something OC.net that there is a Sandy Bridge - E...

[StarBound]

Then its safe to say it will be like AGP x4 and AGP x8. Higher transfer but little noticeable difference. Atleast for the next year or 2.

But then it actually makes sense as to why it is double. 1155 is duel channel while 2011 is quad channel.

[J_Bay]

Or more recently, PCI - E x16 vs x8...

[Slimshaedy]

@Starbound: perhaps you know more about this than I do. But remember when the_jelly ran benchmarks with his 560ti's. He tried x8/x8 vs x16/x16 and he got about 100 points difference. Now that's 32 pci lanes vs 16 lanes right? Now showing that there's such a small difference must surely mean that we aren't fully utilizing the lanes? So pci-e 3 isn't going to make much of a difference??
Or anyone that does know please shed some light! KB might know but he hasn't been online in a while, where you at??

[J_Bay]

KB will know for sure!

[GDI_Lord]

Wikipedia Entry: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... xpress_3.0

[StarBound]

I'm pulling conclusions from past figures. It is possible that no piece of hardware has yet saturated the max bandwidth thru put. I'd like to see the same board and cpu used with a pair of 580s and see what the figures bring. In my mind though more bandwidth doesn't mean more speed because it shows a single x16 card is still slower than 2 x8 cards in a multi gpu configuration.

So the bandwidth is there to expand. We just need the hardware to fully use it.