what is PCI express x16?

Question

what is that and what is it doing in my computer.

Answer 1

It's a type of slot on the motherboard where your video card may be installed.

Definition:

PCI Express is a expansion slot that is becoming the new standard for high speed internal devices for computers such as graphics cards. PCI Express slots come in several types defined by the number of lanes the slot has to communicate with described as x1, x4, x8, x12, x16 and x32.

The most commonly found types inside current computers are the x1 and x16. Graphics cards are available that will run on both x1 and x16 cards. However, all high performance graphics cards use the x16 slot.

Source:
http://peripherals.about.com/od/computertermglossary/g/whatispcie.htm

regards,
Philip T

Answer 2

It is your video card. Here are the specs:
PCI Express, which is abbreviated officially with PCIe (PCI-E is also often used) and should not be mistaken for PCI-X, is an implementation of the PCI connection standard that uses existing PCI programming concepts, but bases it on a completely different and much faster full duplex, multi-lane, point to point serial physical-layer communications protocol. PCI Express was formerly known as Arapaho or 3GIO for 3rd Generation I/O.

PCIe transfers data at 250 MB/s per lane. With a maximum of 32 lanes, PCIe allows for a total combined transfer rate of 8 GB/s.[1] To put these figures into perspective, a single lane has nearly twice the data rate of normal PCI, a four lane slot has a comparable data rate to the fastest version of PCI-X, and an eight lane slot has a data rate comparable to the fastest version of AGP. The full duplex point to point nature of PCIe should further improve its advantage over PCI, particularly in systems with many devices.

Answer 3

PCI Express

"A high-speed peripheral interconnect from Intel introduced in 2002. Note that although sometimes abbreviated "PCX," PCI Express is not the same as "PCI-X" (see PCI-SIG and PCI-X for comparison). As a result of the confusion, "PCI-E" or "PCIE" is the accepted abbreviation.

Initially used for high-speed display adapters, and intending to eventually replace the PCI and AGP buses entirely, PCI Express was designed to match the higher speeds of today's CPUs. It can accommodate Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and even support chip-to-chip transfers."

For more details, see this link: http://www.answers.com/topic/pci-express

Answer 4

It is the new standard for the grphic card interface, much like AGP has been for some time. You deifently are better off if you have a computer with this type of interface.