16x faster than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 interface, PCIe 8.0 is coming

Even though gaming PCs have yet to make the leap to the new PCIe 6.0 interface, work is already underway on not just PCIe 7.0, but now also PCIe 8.0, which looks set to put current PC interfaces to shame. A 16x PCIe 8.0 slot will offer an enormous 1TB/s of bidirectional bandwidth, according to the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG). To put that figure into perspective, a 16x PCIe 4.0 interface, as used by the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, peaks at 64GB/s, which is just 1/16 of the bandwidth of PCIe 8.0.

It's going to be a long time before we see any of the Nvidia gaming GPUs on our best graphics card buying guide sporting high-speed PCIe 8.0 interfaces, of course, but the performance potential here is immense. In fact, even a basic, single-lane PCIe 8.0 slot would offer as much bandwidth as a 16x PCIe 4.0 slot. Not only that, but a 4x PCIe 8.0 connector, which could be used for an M.2 SSD slot, would offer a peak of 256GB/s of bandwidth, meaning we could be looking at SSDs that can read at 120GB/s in the future, if you can find big enough heatsinks for them, naturally.