Can anyone tell me why PCI express motherboards are the best thing now?
 

I see a lot of the top dog video cards using pci express.

Any links to do research on these motherboards would help.

It's mostly a matter of bandwidth. PCI shares the data path across all peripherals, where PCI Express is point to point, and nothing else shares that data link.

PCI Express bus is not directly coupled to the processer, and it has direct access to memory. Here's the long version:

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=21822

And here's another article that covers all the buses (sorry for the bad play on words):

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/190

PCI express is the standard.

Forget standard PCI at this point and if you're motherboard has basic PCI throw them away now.

Sweet I love to read up on new technology =) Thanks for the links. I knew it had to do with bandwith... So AGP is the thing of the past now also I guess?

pcix is twice as fast as agp x8 ie x16, thing is no video cards max out the agp bus yet. Running sli causes both pcix slots to run x8.

PCI Express mobo's are the 'best thing' now because it already is the standard. AGP cars are getting less and less available, if you're getting a new mobo now, there's no point in getting an agp board, unless you want to use some old agp card you have around. There are some mobos that come with both a pci-x and an agp slot, wich is good if you to upgrade your graphics card down the road.

So whats the best motherboard out right now? and for what chip? A64?

Get an A64 and a K8 mobo.