The PCI (Peripeharal Component Interconnect) standard was created in 1993 and it was quickly adopted by motherboard manufacturers as a reliable solution to boost the performance of video cards in particular. Then 3D accelerators appeared and the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) was created in order to offer even more performance gains for the graphics cards. Apparently, the last AGP standard, the 8X, hit a bottleneck and PCI made a surprise return in the form of PCI Express in 2004. All of these standards were created by Intel. Although some say there isn’t much of a performance gain over the AGP 8X with the first PCI-e and even the second version of this standard, Intel is willing to change this perception and plans to release the third generation some time in 2010.

The good news is that the existing PCI Express 2.0 hardware will still work once motherboards switch to the PCI Express 3.0 standard. PCI-SIG chairman Al Yanes has recently disclosed more details about the PCI-e 3.0 connector, which should be able to manage speeds as fast as 8.0 gigatransfers per second

Yanes confirmed that the only real difference between PCI Express 2.0 and 3.0 has to do with the electrical specifications. The actual hardware itself will not see any major optimization, with PCs using one socket and servers two.

However, the 3.0 specs will be decided only by the end of 2009, with testing scheduled for the second half of 2010.