D'Arcy Lemay · 12-30-2004 · Category: Tech-planations

Introduction

One of the biggest news issues of late has been the introduction of PCI Express. The questions are constantly coming in relating to this new technology so people obviously are interested in its explanation. "Why all the news?", "How does this affect me?", "How is it different?" these are all questions that end up in my email inbox from time to time so, in writing one big article I plan to take care of all of those questions in depth here on motherboards.org.

The main reason it's been even bigger news these days is that finally there is support across multiple platforms, as well as some semblance of products that make use of them. Intel was the first on the block with their 9xx series of chipsets, and soon we shall see products for the AMD 939 pin socket in retail. As of yet there is nothing more than a few gigabit Ethernet controllers to plug into the boards, excluding the more discussed graphics solutions. That's something we'll get into later in this piece. First things first though, and that's talking about the whole of what PCI Express is replacing.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. History of PCI
3. Explaining PCI Express
4. Conclusion

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