2x PCI-Express x16 – Continued

This raises the question with what mindset Intel approached the development of a dual x16 PEG desktop platform. The chipset only supports ATI’s crossfire, even though Nvidia’s SLI is more popular with the extreme gaming crowd, due to ATI’s current performance deficits. While there is always the possibility of running two affordable ATI cards as a crossfire setup, this will become a moot point soon with the introduction of the dual-chip Radeon HD 2600 X2 cars with 1 GB of VRAM. ATI also offers very good value for money with the 2900 Pro – but due to the high price, a Crossfire combination of two such cards makes very little sense on an X38 board.

Although two Nvidia 8800GTX would offer the best performance, the X38 does not support SLI.

Another theory tries to offer an explanation. The X38 was developed in the same time frame as the P35. At that point, Intel could not have known that ATI/AMD would no longer be making the fastest cards in the graphics arena.

PCI-Express 2.0

Where PCI-Express is concerned, the X38 has an advantage over all of its competitors. It is the first chipset to support the PCI-Express 2.0 standard. However, this only applies to the two x16 PCIe slots. The four x1 slots or the on x4 slot are attached to the South Bridge of the ICH9 and are therefore still limited to PCI-Express 1.

With PCI-Express 2.0, the frequency of the serial pathways doubles from 2.5 GHz to 5 GHz, giving each PCIe lane a 500MB/s transfer rate. This is true not only for the graphics cars, but any component that uses the new interface, be it a network controller or a sound card.

By the time cards appear that are actually able to utilize this bandwidth, Intel will probably already have introduced newer chipsets. Thus, the PCI-Express 2.0 interface is a nice addition, but doesn’t really contribute to future proofing the board per se.