An anonymous reader shares PC Gamer's report. PCI Express 7.0 is here. However, don't think that you need to start saving to buy a new motherboard right away. PCI-SIG just released the 0.5 version and the final version is expected to be released in 2025. This means that supporting devices will likely appear in 2026, and it could be more widely deployed from 2027 to 2028. PCIe 7.0 will initially be much more relevant to the enterprise market, where bandwidth-intensive applications such as AI and networking will benefit. In any case, the PC market is not saturated with PCIe 5.0 devices, and PCIe 6.0 has not yet penetrated gaming PCs.
PCI Express bandwidth doubles with each generation, so PCIe 7.0 delivers maximum data rates of up to 128 GT/s. This is an impressive 8x faster than PCIe 4.0 and 4x faster than PCIe 5.0. This means that PCIe 7.0 can provide bidirectional throughput of up to 512 GB/s on x16 connections and up to 128 GB/s on x4 connections. The increased bandwidth is definitely beneficial for the CPU to chipset link. This means multiple integrated devices such as 10G networking, WiFi 7, USB 4, and Thunderbolt 4 can all run on consumer motherboards without compromise. And imagine what that bandwidth means for a PCIe 7.0 SSD. In the next few years, PCIe 7.0 x4 SSDs could approach sequential transfer speeds of up to 60GB/s. Achieving speeds in this range would require significant advances in SSD controllers and NAND flash technology, but it's still an attractive proposition. More information: The first official draft of PCIe 7.0 is here, doubling bandwidth again.
