The format will remain backward compatible with earlier versions, so you won’t have to toss out legacy cards.

There’s one main obstacle: as with past specs, there will be a long gap between the PCIe specification’s introduction and when it reaches something you can buy. The PCI-SIG doesn’t expect to finalize 6.0 until 2021, and it’ll realistically require a year or two after that before processors and peripherals take advantage of the extra bandwidth.

Still, it could be worth the wait. Everyday graphics cards wouldn’t benefit as much (at least not at first), but this could be extremely helpful for AI acceleration, solid-state drives, non-volatile memory and other tasks that are highly dependent on transferring massive amounts of data. If there are any bottlenecks in the near future, PCI Express won’t be to blame.