Thursday, April 19, 2012

Video Card Interface Definition

A video card's interface is the type of connection it uses to attach to the motherboard. The most modern type of interface is PCI Express 3.0 x16. Every PCI-express version is compatible with the others but they will only run as fast as the weakest part. This could be the motherboard or the video card.

PCI Express Speeds:
PCI Express 3.0 = 8Gt/s
PCI Express 2.0 = 5Gt/s
PCI Express 1.0 = 2.5Gt/s

PCI Express cards also come in different lengths as indicated by the number of lanes. The most common amount of lanes for video cards are x16.

PCI Express Lanes:
PCI Express x16
PCI Express x8
PCI Express x4
PCI Express x1

No comments:

Post a Comment