ALTHOUGH motherboards and core logic chips with PCI Express support aren't due out for weeks, ATI and NVIDIA have already announced plans to make current generation Radeon and GeForce FX parts compatible with the new interconnect technology. ATI and NVIDIA agree that PCI Express is the next big interface for graphics, but the two companies are initially supporting PCI Express in very different ways: ATI will provide PCI Express compatibility with a new line of GPUs that offer native PCI-E support, while NVIDIA's first PCI Express efforts will use a bridge chip to graft AGP GPUs to the PCI-E interface.

According to ATI, bridging creates all sorts of performance and compatibility problems that won't impede its native PCI-E implementation. However, NVIDIA insists that its bridge solution is sound. Join me as I dissect ATI and NVIDIA's PCI Express strategies to see if either argument holds water.