That’ll do nicely

PCI Express to be phased out in favour of new interface, reports Esmeralda Frontside-Bus

Just when we’d resigned ourselves to the inevitable phasing out of AGP, it looks like PCI Express is soon to go the same way. Both ATi and Nvidia will be releasing their next-generation products on the new PCI American Express bus. A development of PCI Express 16x, the new interface will have one extra lane for increased performance.

‘PCI Express was already starting to show its restrictions, particularly in SLI,’ Nvidia’s spokesperson Adamant Stoat told us. ‘The extra lane in the 17x PCI American Express bus will enable unparalleled levels of profit, sorry, I mean performance for the next generation of graphics cards.’

Despite its obvious benefits, PCI American Express has one major downside – it will not be backwards compatible with its predecessor. This will mean that end users will be forced to upgrade their motherboards to take advantage of graphics cards using the new interface. Support is due in the forthcoming Nvidia NForcedUpgrade 6 and ATi CopycatFire 2000 core logic, which will also incorporate the groundbreaking Pointless Peripheral Bus. This new interface has been specifically designed to remain unused for years to come, placing it in direct competition with PCI Express 1x.

‘Now that we’ve successfully moved everyone over to PCI Express, it makes a lot more financial sense to introduce a new bus and only launch our best graphics cards on it,’ explained ATi’s PR Mythologist Andreas Bulimia. ‘This maximises the user experience for optimum quality, or something. Does it matter?’

PCI American Express is due to hit the market in late 2006, or just when everyone has upgraded to PCI Express.