Why all the PCI-E slots?

so does anyone know the point of the pci-e 1x and 4x slots? so far i've seen like, 1 tv tuner that plugs into the x1 slot but besides that i haven't really seen peripherals that choose this type of connection. so whats the point of it?

PCIExpress is fast becoming the new standard PCI interface - GPU's, and anything that requires it tend to use it due to it's faster bus speed.

It is the new standard but it's not exactly mainstream yet. The biggest feat of PCI-e was for on-board components. They also put the standard PCI interface on the PCI-e bus in "compatibility" mode. So your current PCI devices are using it without even knowing it. Granted, this offers no benefit unless you have EVERY PCI slot in your machine filled.

You should slowly see more PCI-e cards as time goes on. Hopefully the mobo manufacturers will get with it and just remove PCI and IDE from any new motherboards and send a "GIT YER REAR IN GEAR" to all the card makers and optical drive makers to start using PCI-e & SATA/300.

:nods: it would be nice to have all components pci-e. i'm only using 1 of their slots on my mobo and thats for my x800.

By the way, what advantages do PCI-e cards have over AGP cards ? Ive heard PCI-e cards are cheaper and offer better quality whereas if you wanted the same quality on an AGP card you'll have to spend more money.

Also i have 2x PCI Express x1 and 1x PCI Express x4, what are they for ?

PCI-e was just a "rethinking" of PCI. Basically it streamlines PCI and serializes the processing as well as making it full-duplex on the bandwidth.

The different ports are for different things, why have something that will work fine on PCI-e x1 on a PCI-e x16 slot? Save that x16 slot for the more data hungry cards. It just means it has more lanes for bandwidth.

Ideally all nominal PCI cards would soon become PCI-E x1 with ones that could benefit from the greater bandwidth to PCI-E x4 to the ones that REALLY need bandwidth (like video cards) to PCI-E x8 or PCI-E x16.

yeah and now mobos are coming with 3 8X/16X slots for Tri-card Cross-fire. Its basicaly is SLI with one card as a physics processor(for those who wanted to know....)

interesting...i haven't heard anything about that yet.