The PCI Special Interest Group held a press conference, detailing the shift to PCI Express 3.0 in roughly 2010, and improvements to the external cabling specification that allow for external graphics solutions.

The PCI-SIG said last year that they were preparing an electromechanical specification for these types of cards, and in fact, according to a SIG slide presentation released ahead of the meeting, the specification was released at the end of March. Why do we need such a spec? As of now, the 150-watt spec is no longer sufficient, according to the SIG.

Besides the 2x3 connector defined in the 150W Graphics Spec 1.0, a new 2x4 connector is being defined for delivering power to the 225/300W cards, the SIG said.