Final answer:
A PCIe v. 2.x single-lane (x1) link has a maximum throughput of 500 MB/s, calculated with the PCIe 2.0 standard's data rate and the 8b/10b encoding.
Step-by-step explanation:
A single-lane (x1) PCIe version 2.x link offers a maximum throughput of 500 MB/s. This throughput is calculated using the PCIe 2.0 standard, which has a per-lane data rate of 5 GT/s (GigaTransfers per second). Since each PCIe lane consists of two pairs of wires (one for sending and one for receiving), and considering the 8b/10b encoding used in PCIe 2.0, where every 10 bits transmitted contain 8 bits of data, we arrive at the 500 MB/s figure (5 GT/s * 1 byte/10 bits * 8/8 bits/byte).