Are PCI Card Slots becoming EXTINCT !! ???

[yuppy]

What happened to the good old 5 PCI card slots lately in motherboards..? Every motherboard I 've looked at lately have 2 of them..on full ATX mobo's.. I was at Fry's electronic the other day and I literally couldn't find a motherboard there with 5 full PCI slots..instead many of them have these
bizarre chopped off slots.. .What are they ? are they some sort of new format or something ? cause I've never seen a different PCI card like that..and everything on the market is still pretty much regular PCI cards... What is going on ? I know that now with USB2 and Firewire there are lots of outboard stuff but I would assume that MOBO manufacturers would want to include all the slots..beats me...! I remember not so long ago even mother boards with 6 PCI card slots...I have a lot of PCI card stuff and even with my current ASUS P5P800 5 slot mobo I can't fit them all and wish had more....Does anyone knows about this..?

[monrroy24]

I had the same question. but I will follow this tread to see if samebody have the answer.

[doctorgonzo]

The newer, shorter slots are PCI Express. They will be replacing PCI slots. They offer better speeds, more flexibility, and other advances over plain old PCI. This transition will be the same as the old ISA to PCI transition: newer motherboards will have fewer of the old and more of the new, until PCI disappears totally. It will take some time, though.

[Cricket]

PCI slots are slowly being replace by PCI-Express (http://shop.store.yahoo.com/directron/expressguide.html) slots.

:) Cricket

[flanzig1]

Also, many things now are built into the mother board that a few years ago were add-on PCI cards. Things like ethernet, modems, sound, USB, Firewire.