Finally, a PCIe x1 card arrives

EVER SINCE the PCI Express standard appeared on the market back in the early summer of 2004, we have been bombarded with various graphic cards featuring X16 slot. The X4 and X1 simply did not take off the ground, and with Creative and AGEIA debuting their latest gen products using the obsolete PCI bus - things were certain to paralyse the market inside old PCI arena.

True, there was a Matrox x1 PCIe graphics card, and there were more than several RAID controllers getting onto the PCIe bandwagon using x8 and x16 standards. But for mainstream users, those products simply come from highly specialised markets and are not of general public interest.

We're not talking about products which usually hit the manufacturing in quantities of couple thousands, but rather hundreds of thousands to couple of million units.

The delay in the implementation of PCI Express standard proved to be a huge problem for SFF manufacturers, who would gladly ditch PCI and use the x1 slot instead. Free space on the PCB could be used to put some controller, or an audio chip. Gigabyte has just done that with its 975X board, as reported here.

TUL Corporation is the first company that went into mass production with their PCIe x1 board. Under its PowerColor brand, the Theater 550Pro now exists in PCIe version as well - and the product started to appear inside Japanese IT-Mecca, Akihabara.

Asking price is set around $100 dollars, but the Japanese market is known for higher component prices.

The board looks just like the PCI version, and there is no visible difference in drivers. As almost every Theater 550Pro board out there, the manufacturer bundles it with CyberLink software suite and a remote controller of significant length. µ

L'INQ
Manufacturer web site