The Rabbit Hole of PCIE 4.0 Storage on Intel

[rainless]

EDIT: Annnd of course I found this article which neatly explains everything: https://premiumbuilds.com/guides/what-is-pcie-4-0-motherboard-cpu-support/ No PCIE 4.0 on Intel until Rocket Lake. I suddenly feel a LOT better about having gotten a 9th Generation Intel Processor instead of waiting around for 10th. Now I can sit tight until I either switch to AMD or Rocket Lake comes out.

I started by reading this fascinating article about next gen Console loading times vs a PCIE 4.0 SSD drive: https://www.notebookcheck.net/PlayS...farewell-to-the-last-generation.503949.0.html

...and it lea, inevitably, to me searching for whether or not my Gigabyte board was PCIE 4.0 compliant (it's only 3.0 compliant) and then to this article about PCIE 4.0 on Gigabyte Z490 motherboards:

https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-z490-pcie-4-support/

Since this article was written in April of this year... I'm wondering where PCIE 4.0 support stands NOW?

The original article tested those load times on an AMD cpu. So I'm curious what's going on there and if AMD is just light years (or two years) ahead on PCIE 4.0 support?

 

[Woomack]

Some higher Z490 mobos are using additional chip/clock generator to provide PCIe 4.0 support. Check product pages. It usually covers one PCIe x16 and one M.2 socket.

Here is one example:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z490 Taichi/index.asp

"PCI Express 4.0 Hardware Ready!
Welcome to the PCI Express 4.0 new era and be a smart buyer with ASRock motherboards! Z490 enthusiast level motherboards equipped with luxury components that allows geeks to be hardware ready for PCI Express 4.0 standard !"

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

So I'm curious what's going on there and if AMD is just light years (or two years) ahead on PCIE 4.0 support?

Reminds me of when Intel stuck to FSB for longer than AMD, but Intel still was performing super!

But vice-versa for AMD, when they were sticking with the "5V spec", where processors were fed off the 5V rail, except for mostly high-end motherboards with socket 462.

Except for Asus, where the A7N8X family all drew from the 5V rail.

 

[EarthDog]

Looks like you have your answer.

As woomack said, some z490 boards support PCIe 4.0...just need rocket lake to drop. That said, on the storage front, you'd be hard-pressed to see the difference between pcie 3.0 and 4.0 droves outside of benchmarks. GPUs are still only showing negligible gains from PCIe 3.0 xq6 to 4.0 x16.

 

[Ben333]

I'm getting around 3 GB \ sec on crystal disk mark with my $100ish nvme 3.0 SSD. I've seen people getting around 5 GB \ sec with gen 4, but at more than double that price.

3.0 is good enough for me. But nice that my platform (AMD B550) supports gen 4.

 

[rainless]

Looks like you have your answer.

As woomack said, some z490 boards support PCIe 4.0...just need rocket lake to drop. That said, on the storage front, you'd be hard-pressed to see the difference between pcie 3.0 and 4.0 droves outside of benchmarks. GPUs are still only showing negligible gains from PCIe 3.0 xq6 to 4.0 x16.

I'm getting around 3 GB \ sec on crystal disk mark with my $100ish nvme 3.0 SSD. I've seen people getting around 5 GB \ sec with gen 4, but at more than double that price.

3.0 is good enough for me. But nice that my platform (AMD B550) supports gen 4.

Well, of course, it started with this link about Next Gen loading times: https://www.notebookcheck.net/PlayS...farewell-to-the-last-generation.503949.0.html

Then I started reading about PCIE 4... because I had no idea it already existed. I mean MY 9600KF CPU outperforms the AMD CPU they were using in the tests... so I became a little curious. The second link says that PCIE 4 is supposed to be like double the speed...

At any rate... it is curious that Intel seems to have had so much trouble getting PCIE 4 to work. (See the last link.) Apparently they STILL haven't quite got it yet...

I'm sure they will by the time of Rocket Lake... but I'm glad I didn't blow extra money on a 10th generation chip.

 

[EarthDog]

Trouble getting it to work? I can't say I've heard that before. I read all the links above, none seem state/infer that (apologies if I missed it). This was a design choice AFAIK. Comet Lake never was going to have 4.0... it was always Rocket Lake. When rocket lake arrives, those Z490 boards that have all the redrivers and other hardware necessary should be able to run 4.0 (likely with a bios update with support for RL CPUs).

PCIe 4.0, for the consumer doesn't really do much. The difference between these drives in daily activities is minimal in a lot of cases. Sustained reads and such, smoking fast, but are you dealing with monsterous data sets and such where that could be a benefit?

We know losses from gaming are to the tune of 1%...I guess what I'm saying here is I wouldn't put too much stock in PCIe 4.0.

ALso, If you didn't know 4 existed, 5 has been certified for years (likely see this on Zen4) and 6's specs were just approved.

 

[rainless]

Looks like you have your answer.

As woomack said, some z490 boards support PCIe 4.0...just need rocket lake to drop. That said, on the storage front, you'd be hard-pressed to see the difference between pcie 3.0 and 4.0 droves outside of benchmarks. GPUs are still only showing negligible gains from PCIe 3.0 xq6 to 4.0 x16.

Trouble getting it to work? I can't say I've heard that before. I read all the links above, none seem state/infer that (apologies if I missed it). This was a design choice AFAIK. Comet Lake never was going to have 4.0... it was always Rocket Lake. When rocket lake arrives, those Z490 boards that have all the redrivers and other hardware necessary should be able to run 4.0 (likely with a bios update with support for RL CPUs).

PCIe 4.0, for the consumer doesn't really do much. The difference between these drives in daily activities is minimal in a lot of cases. Sustained reads and such, smoking fast, but are you dealing with monsterous data sets and such where that could be a benefit?

We know losses from gaming are to the tune of 1%...I guess what I'm saying here is I wouldn't put too much stock in PCIe 4.0.

So you're saying that, as far as the first link goes, PCIE 3.0 would only be 1% slower? I'm confused...

ALso, If you didn't know 4 existed, 5 has been certified for years (likely see this on Zen4) and 6's specs were just approved.

That I did NOT know... Thanks!

I might really need to look into switching to AMD in the coming years...

 

[EarthDog]

So you're saying that, as far as the first link goes, PCIE 3.0 would only be 1% slower? I'm confused...

Not sure what you're saying about a link, but here is an article covering what im saying about gaming performance and pcie 4.0 vs 3.0.....

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-pci-express-scaling/

 

[rainless]

Looks like you have your answer.

As woomack said, some z490 boards support PCIe 4.0...just need rocket lake to drop. That said, on the storage front, you'd be hard-pressed to see the difference between pcie 3.0 and 4.0 droves outside of benchmarks. GPUs are still only showing negligible gains from PCIe 3.0 xq6 to 4.0 x16.

Not sure what you're saying about a link,

https://www.notebookcheck.net/PlayS...farewell-to-the-last-generation.503949.0.html

 

[EarthDog]

Storage is different.