The EISA bus was introduced in 1989 and was the PC industry's response to IBM's MCA bus. This 32-bit bus is designed to provide a wider data path. It is compatible with the ISA bus. The older 8/16-bit ISA cards can be used in EISA expansion slots. With a "four lane" bus, data could now be transferred at an even faster rate.

Although a sound design, EISA never became as popular as the MCA bus. Few EISA expansion cards were developed. As CPU technology advanced, faster buses were needed to match the high processing CPU speeds.