The latest podcast from Hardware Asylum is now available. Episode 81 sees Dennis and Darren tackle the subject of PCIe Gen 4.0, a new spec that could well be upon us in the next year or so. They also revisit the 7 Days to Die game that they have been playing recently. Here are the show notes:

PCI Express 4.0 Standard Released - Back in 2003 the first PCI Express standard was released which really changed everything in a modern computer system. Many users take this technology for granted however, without it we wouldn’t have super fast NVMe drives, configurable SLI, AMD Crossfire or even the BItcoin mining systems you see showcased on YouTube. All of those things were made possible, (or improved in the case of SLI) by using PCI Express.

A computer standard it defines how it should work and gives manufactures something to use when designing new products. PCI Express 4.0 supports 64GB/s of transfer bandwidth which is double that of PCI Express 3.0 and is a logical step forward. We suspect it will be about a year before we will start seeing products supporting PCI Express 4.0 and maybe two years before it becomes a mainstream thing. In that time maybe someone can finally make a “good” external graphics option so we can finally kill off the desktop PC. Not that I am in support of that but, that is sadly the way of the future.

Catch episode 81 of the Hardware Asylum podcast here.

Discuss in the HWBOT Community Forum here.