Overclockers

Gigabyte and MSI are at it again…this time Gigabyte fires back at MSI on their claims that Gigabyte boards aren’t really ready for native PCIe Gen3. Just like MSI, Gigabyte’s presentation slides are technical in nature, and focus on the key components that require a board to be PCIe Gen3 ready. Let’s take a look at the slides, courtesy of the folks at TPU.

Slide 1

Slide 2	Slide 3
Slide 4	Slide 5

There are a few motherboards that definitely don’t support Gen3, Gigabyte mentions, which are the Z68X-UD7-B3, P67A-UD7 and P67A-UD7-B3. However, they have roughly 40 other boards that they claim are PCIe Gen3 ready. However, what constitutes “PCIe Gen3 ready” is what’s up for debate here. Gigabyte claims that on motherboards with only one PCIe x16 slot, that Gen3 switching isn’t “necessary” because a GPU will run at Gen3 x8 natively without switching. Note, that’s x8 Gen3 PCIe and not the full x16. So, technically, their 40 or so boards will support Gen3 PCIe but not at the full x16 and only if there is a single Gen3 PCIe slot in the system.

So, who’s right? Gigabyte or MSI? Let us know what you think in the comments!

-John Tyra (Jmtyra)

Tags: gigabyte, msi, PCIe Gen3, Software

6 Comments:

mas5acre

09-22-11 03:03 AM

I think the better question, is "who cares"? There isn't a card out there that is bottlenecked by an pcie x16 gen 2 slot. It was also proven an x8 pcie slot vs. an x16 pcie slot affected performance by less than 3%. All this mumbo jumbo is for people who buy sata 3 hdds. Its not like this is an AGP vs. PCIE question in the days long past. By the time there is a signifcant (more than 3-5%) bottleneck caused by pcie 2.0, the system will probably need a new cpu and mobo anyway cause those parts would also be the bottleneck.

Jmtyra

09-22-11 05:39 AM

You might have a point, but there are many system builders out there that don't know better, such as your example about 6 Gbit/s SATA HDs. Overall, it seems to be political, and really only centered around each company's reputation.

Archer0915

09-22-11 05:54 AM

Hey my burst speeds are better on the SATA III and the raid shows improvement

On to how I feel about this though. I do not even care about the x16 slots I want some South Bridge 3.0 love. What good is having screaming fast storage if you cant push the data up the pipe? Hell throw in some heavy USB usage and take it up to some USB 3.0 on some of this shared lane crap and you have slowdowns.

I.M.O.G.

09-22-11 05:56 AM

Agreed JT, its wrangling for position, but purely a marketing team battle. Unfortunately however, I talk to people in Microcenters regularly - a lot of people who love to talk computer stuff but many of them not all that well informed. I think both MSI and Gigabyte know their audience well, and the flashy features and things that don't mean much of anything right now do actually win customers in many cases... For a salesman, its easy to convince someone to pay 10 bucks extra for PCIe 3.0, unless they want to save a few bucks to buy the "old" technology PCIe 2.0. Not many consumers want to buy new old tech, unless they know better that its a meaningless differentiation.

Basically, its why our community is the exception - we are well informed in our purchasing decisions, unlike the masses.

pwnmachine

02-20-12 08:30 AM

Agreed, however things like this are great for everyone since it keeps manufacturers on their toes

GunzRX

07-27-12 11:17 PM

Exactly, tbh only something above the bare-low-end plz recycle me mobos are needed for the most part today because of cpus no longer needing fsb. Water is dif since you will push it further but for air even a 50-70 dollar mobo is fine. Hell, I got a phenom ii x3 955 (I think) from 2.7 to 3.3 quad I do have to press f1 cuz the vrms arent too good, but when I put that under water I'll switch. From an Asus to a Gigabyte of course.

I've had 1 msi before, it wouldn't accept 2 ram slots as long as the 212 was on it otherwise it was fine. Proly some grounding or something but the dual core was getting long in the wind anyway.

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