IS YOUR RIG RUNNING PCIE 5.0? Then it’s tasty stuff, as version 5.0 is only just about to become properly mainstream. Version 6.0 only recently reached its final specifications, and you won’t find hardware around yet. The PCI-SIG (the Special Interest Group that manages the format’s standards) has announced that it is “on track” to finalize PCIe 7.0 by 2025. The gap between this and the first hardware being available is just over a year. Each iteration of PCIe doubles the data rate of the previous generation. PCIe 5.0 offers 128GB/s bidirectional transfers on a x16 link, so PCIe 7.0 will take us to 512GB/s. PCIe’s impressive bandwidth, right from the original specifications, has given us more than we could ever easily flood with data, which is not something you can say about many interconnect standards. PCI-SIG has kept itself well ahead of the curve, making it king. Expect some PCIe 6.0 kit next year, and version 7.0 stuff in 2026.