So basically, for anyone that has a PCIe 2.0 Motherboard and Video card is experiencing PCIe 32x, even though it is STILL considered PCIe 2.0 16x.
Now for a practical application, so you know what to, or not to do when building your computer:
PCIe 2.0 is completely backward compatible with PCIe v1.x, so graphic cards and motherboards designed for v2.0 will be able to work with v1.0 and vice versa. The transition to PCIe 2.0 won't be anything like the move from AGP to PCIe. The cards and motherboards are backwards and forwards compatible. PCIe 1.0 and 1.1 compliant cards can be plugged into a PCIe 2.0 motherboard, and PCIe 2.0 cards can be plugged into older motherboards. This leaves us with zero impact on the consumer due to PCIe 2.0, in more ways than one.
Currently, for those of you looking to upgrade your video card or computer in more ways than one, I STRONGLY SUGGEST you purchase a 8800GT, any of the models available. The 8800GT will honestly out perform a single of my 8800Ultra on a PCIe 2.0 platform. Why would a video card that cost less than half the price and is half the size do better? my 8800 Ultra runs on PCIe 16x, not the 32x platform.
Also, one major difference that many many people will not notice in on bit, which is also the reason why the card is a single slot video card: The 8800 is nVidia's first 65nm GPU, that means this GPU is on par with every Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad, and Core 2 Extreme... Less the latest QX9650 which is a 45nm CPU. All of the previous G80 GPUs, i.e. any 8000 series GPU that isnt the 8800GT is a 90nm GPU.
So.... what on earth is MrBlah talking about here? what is this 45nm, 65nm and 90nm bullhonky?
To keep it simple, nm stands for nanometer or 1x10^(-9) and the smaller the nm measurement, the cooler your processing unit will operate at which allows for high clock speeds and greater performance. In a simple sense, it refers to the level of semiconductor process technology. Process technology refers to the particular method used to make silicon chips. The driving force behind the manufacture of integrated circuits is miniaturization, and process technology boils down to the size of the finished transistor and other components, or features. The smaller the transistors, the more transistors in the same area, the faster they switch, the less energy they require and the cooler the chip runs (given equal numbers of transistors). Hence why the 8800GT is a single slot card and is the best GPU on the market right now.
On the higher level, for those of you that really want to learn, the 45nm, 65nm and 90nm measurement is should refer to the average half-pitch of a memory cell manufactured at that technology level. Feature Size, the size of the elements on a chip, is designated by the "DRAM half pitch." This DRAM Half Pitch is the common measure of the technology generation of a chip. It is half the distance between cells in a dynamic RAM memory chip.The smallest feature size is generally smaller than the feature size for a technology generation (technology node). For example, the 90 nm technology generation(which we kinda just left maybe a year to two yearsago or so) will have gate lengths smaller than 90 nm. Historically, the process technology referred to the length of the silicon channel between the source and drain terminals in field effect transistors (FETs). The sizes of other features are generally derived as a ratio of the channel length, where some may be larger than the channel size and some may be smaller. For example, in a 90 nm process, the length of the channel may be 90 nm, but the width of the gate terminal may be only 50 nm.
picture is a little big, but i hope its a good illustration, how y'all get it.
Now as the process technology get smaller and smaller, the next two levels are 32nm and 22nm, you will start to see 8-core CPUs running at 6GHz+ and so one and so forth. The smaller the transistors, the more they can cram into one processing unit. Since chips that run at 45nm use less energy than a 65nm or 90nm chip, the chip will operate cooler. Since its cooler, you can increase that amount of calculations per second the CPU can do to make up for the cooler operating temperature. Aside from that, in all reality, all these 750W and 1kW PSU many people have(including my self).... will actually become useless to an extent, because your CPUs will become ultra low power, along with your GPUs, and same goes for your motherboard. Your MoBo chipsets are starting to use 90nm chips now, so even less power and whatnot. The only big use we have for our PSUs is spinning motors that run your HDDs, fans, liquid-cooling pumps, cool lighting arrays, and optical drives, and you can only have so many of those in a single computer.
So, now you have learned something. now you know why the 8800GT is the best GPU on the market right now and also why Beeron will be saving up more money to buy a QX9650, the 45nm quad core Intel Core 2 Extreme.
I think ill be doing these more often
I figure i will edumacate The Ville
enjoy 
