Written by Metal Messiah
When AMD released the Ryzen 3000-series processors last year, one of the key features was support for the fast PCIe 4.0 interface, but only if you bought the “expensive” high-end X570 Motherboard. Now with the recent announcement of B550 motherboards, AMD is bringing “limited” PCIe 4.0 support to this affordable mainstream platform as well.
Previously, AMD’s high-end X570 chipset was the first to bring PCI Express 4.0 (PCIe 4.0) support. This new standard offered roughly up to 2X the “bandwidth” support for the next generation hardware, e.g. SSDs, network Adapters, GPUs etc. Now, the B550 chipset is bringing the “potential” of PCIe 4.0 to the “mainstream” market. Today many AM4 B550 motherboard are on the rollout, with several vendors listing their Models with an expected launch date of June 16th 2020.
Recently AMD announced that the company’s B450 and X470 chipset boards will have proper Zen 3 CPU Support, but that comes without the benefits of “PCIe 4.0”, and the associated increased bandwidth.
With this in mind, one of the major key points of the new B550 chipset is that it will support PCIe 4.0 and obviously Zen 3 CPUs, giving gamers and end users a more “affordable” option to upgrade. When compared to the “B450 chipset”, the B550 officially supports PCIe 4.0 devices within the full length PCIe slot thrown by the CPU.
This could actually mean that the top full-length slot will run at PCIe 4.0 x16, with some models also allowing for “x8/x8” configuration from a second full-length slot (could also support Nvidia SLI). Another benefit of the B550 chipset includes support for up to two USB 3.1 G2 ports, which B450 lacks.
One caveat is that B550 boards won’t support the previous 1st- and 2nd-gen Ryzen processors, or the Ryzen 3000 APUs like the Ryzen 5 3400G. While we do have the same AM4 socket, “ROM size limitations” makes it very difficult for board makers to include support for all current, future, and past Ryzen processors with a single “firmware” patch. Of course Motherboard vendors can possibly release BIOS patches, though we can’t count on this yet.
Regardless, you won’t get “PCIe 4.0” support unless you install a Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 CPU in one of these motherboards. You will get PCIe 4.0 support through the CPU, delivering sufficient lanes for fast NVMe storage and the GPU. “Dual-GPU” support is also included, though not many gamers are going to opt for an SLI/CrossfireX setup these days, given the current state of “game” engines.
Also included in B550 is the doubling of the bandwidth of the motherboard’s “general-purpose” PCIe lanes from the chipset. This “per-lane” throughput has actually allowed AMD to “reduce” the number of lanes between the chipset and CPU from six PCIe 2.0 lanes to four PCIe 3.0.
Even though the expensive X570 still gives more bandwidth on the “chipset” level, along with a faster uplink connection from the chipset to the CPU, but for majority of “gamers” and end users the bus bandwidth and other features offered by the B550 chipset should be more than enough. After all, most of the gamers are going to install a single GPU, along with few fast SSDs and other stuff.
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can a non marketer explain pcie 4.0 to me? i know its more info bandwith,etc… but i have a amd 580 and will get nvidia next 2080ti successor unless amd btfo of them. do i need this?is my now and future gpu okay with 3.0? will 4.0 mobo give me better fps and settings on m current gpu? from what i hear its a meme for the next 3-5 years. idk though.
This is just a new released version 4.0 of the PCI-Express standard. PCI-E is backwards compatible. Which Motherboard are you actually having ?
PCI-E is backwards compatible, meaning even if your Motherboard supports gen 2.0, any gen 3.0 GPU will also work on that same board. You don’t need a PCI-e gen 4 Motherboard to support future GPUs. This is not a compulsion.
There won’t be any performance drop whatsoever (you won’t even notice it while gaming). Like “S_fnx” mentioned before, there won’t be any fps impact, at least when using a discrete GPU.
But all PCI Express versions are backward and forward compatible, meaning no matter what version the PCIe card or your motherboard supports, they should work together, at least at a minimum level.
“You might be already knowing this theory explained below, but I’m just pointing this out here nonetheless”. Just for reference.
One very important thing to know, however, is that to get the increased bandwidth (which usually equates to the greatest performance), you’ll want to choose the highest PCIe version that your motherboard supports and choose the largest PCIe size that will fit.
For example, a PCIe 3.0 x16 video card will give you the greatest performance, but only if your motherboard also supports PCIe 3.0 and has a free PCIe x16 slot. If your motherboard only supports PCIe 2.0, then the card will only work up to that supported speed (e.g., 64 Gbit/s in the x16 slot).
The only slight disadvantage is that it will only have the maximum bandwidth provided by the slot; i.e., if you install an x16 video card in an x4 slot, it will have only x4 bandwidth available.
To reach the maximum performance possible, both the expansion card and the PCI Express controller (available inside the CPU or inside the motherboard chipset, depending on your system) have to be of the same revision.
If you have a PCI Express 2.0 video card and install it on a system with a PCI Express 3.0 controller, you will be limited to the PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth. The same video card installed on an old system with a PCI Express 1.0 controller will be limited to the PCI Express 1.0 bandwidth.
I prefer buying budget mobos and cards. not really interested in Pcie 4 right now, but in future I might be needing it for my storage.
its good the 500 board is offering the latest gen support. have they increased the price of these boards as well, by including 4.0 version of pcie ??
Nope. The price of the mobo has not been increased till now.