Help to choose fpga development kit with pci express

Your question is too vague. Can you please provide a little more information. For example,

1. Why do you think you need to use an FPGA?

2. Why do you think you need to use a PCIe board?

3. What language do you plan on using to program the board? For example, if you plan on using OpenCL, then you need to select a board that has a board-support-package.

4. How much experience have you had with FPGAs, and interfacing to PCIe devices? Are you planning on writing a Linux device driver or Windows device driver to access the board? If not, you need to make sure that good software support exists for the hardware.

5. Its important to me to be able to simulate designs. For a PCIe board, you need a PCIe bus functional model (BFM). Altera used to have PCIe BFM support (for Cyclone IV and Stratix IV series devices), and then they removed it. If simulation is important to you, then you need to investigate whether the board you are interested in has PCIe BFM support.

You should take a look at the Altera development boards, the boards on Terasic's web site, and the boards on Bittware's web site. There are quite a few with PCIe and there is quite a range of prices. Before you decide on buying a board, you should check what resources you need on the board. For example, do you need memory, do you need I/O off the board. You claim you do not need memory or I/O, but there are very few developments boards without these things. At a minimum you would need to determine what sort of FPGA you need to meet your processing requirements.

Once you have a list of boards that you think might be suitable, ask for board feedback from people on this list.

Cheers,

Dave