It has been a couple of months since the PCIe 5.0 standard made its debut with the Intel Alder Lake, and we already have spec sheets of the PCIe 6.0 standard. From the looks of it, it seems like PCIe 6.0 will deliver twice the bandwidth of the current 5.0 standard along with plenty of speed gains for the next-generation SSDs and GPUs. In this article, we are gonna talk about what the PCIe 6.0 standard is all about to give you a brief understanding of what to expect from it. So without further chatter, let’s dive in.

What is PCIe?

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express or PCIe in short, is basically an interface that lets you plug in speedy components in your motherboard. All computer motherboards come with multiple PCIe slots that are utilized to install your GPU, SSD, and sound card. PCIe speed is measured in both GT per second and GB per second. GT/s is used to measure the raw speed while the GB/s signals data rate. Over the decade, this express standard experienced significant improvement from one generation to another.

Tomshardware has put together this nice little chart that illustrates how the bandwidth of each generation has doubled in terms of speed.

Released in May of 2019, PCIe 5.0 standard has 32 GT per second raw speed and 128 GB per second of bandwidth which is significantly higher compared to the previous gen.

And now, with the PCIe 6.0 standard, we are looking at 16GB/s speed on the x1 interface, 32GB/s on the x2, 64GB/s in the x4, 128 on the x8, and up to 256GB/s on the x16 slot.

Final Words

It is quite astonishing how the PCIe standard has doubled in speed over the decade. It is also rumored to be compatible with the previous-gen standards which will come in handy while pairing it up with your previous hardware.

We are expecting to see the PCIe 6.0 Express be made available by 2022 to general consumers. For now, expect to see more PCIe 5.0 goodies for the latest intel motherboards and upcoming AMD hardwares.