I've been reading a little about PCI Express and there seem to be some interesting possibilities for it in the Mac. Since I don't have enough technical knowledge to really evaluate these ideas, I thought I'd post them and see whether they can be shot down as unworkable or impractical.
Free (almost) Expansion Slots
Apple has not been eager to put expansion slots in consumer desktop Macs. Yet with Express, they may be almost free and Apple might reconsider. It appears that X16 PCI Express slots will be the future for Graphics cards. AGP is on the way out, but will linger for a while. It seems that Apple may use X16 PCI Express before long for all its Graphics cards. So here is the idea.
Once PCI Express is on board, it has a lot more channels than the 16 for graphics. Apple could add expansion slots for just the cost of a tiny X1 connector and cover plate for each slot. The cost should be insignificant. Since Apple has no recent history of offering expansion slots in this market, there is no need to have anything but PCI Express. The X86 PCs will be burdened with bridge circuitry, going from PCI Express to standard PCI, and additional standard connectors. In this way, the Mac could have a real manufacturing cost advantage.
Expansion Slots in a Very Low End Mac
PCI Express might be applicable in a very low cost Mac too, if Apple ever decides to makes such a product. At the very low end, the graphics performance can often be sacrificed for many uses. There are many undemanding applications that don't need much from the graphics chip. Yet, if a low cost Mac like this had an X16 PCI slot for graphics, there may not be a cheap enough card for this market. Most cheap PCs on the X86 side have on-board graphics chips from what I hear. So here is the question.
Is there anything inherent in an X16 PCI Express slot that would prevent it from interfacing with a very low cost and low performance graphics chip? If not, Apple could contract out for someone to build them a really cheap X16 PCI Express graphics card, to go into the lowest performance and cost option. Of course Apple can offer better graphics cards for this model Mac too, at a higher price.
Thanks in advance for all criticisms.
Jerry