Gigabyte Enables PCIe 4.0 on X470 and B450 Motherboards (Updated)

Comments

• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348

  June 2019

  AMD says it's not supported on 400 series motherboards.  I'm not sure if that's in the sense of "not officially supported by AMD, but motherboard vendors can do whatever" or "AMD will refuse to sell Gigabyte any more chipsets if they insist on supporting it".
  
  At least for the x16 connection intended for a video card, there's no technical reason why it wouldn't be possible to support PCI Express 4.0 with an X470 or B450 chipset, as those lanes don't go through the chipset.  If the PCI Express 4.0 specification was known far enough in advance, it would even be possible for the motherboard vendor to intentionally support it when designing the motherboard.  But it's unlikely that the motherboard traces would just happen to be able to handle the higher signaling rates by accident, with the possible exception of a flagship motherboard that massively over-engineers everything.
  
  I doubt that AMD would have a principled objection to allowing PCI Express 4.0 on X470 motherboards if they believed that it would be sufficiently reliable.  But they might have serious reliability concerns, as if the motherboard isn't engineered properly for PCI Express 4.0 and it causes stability or reliability problems on 10% of the units that try to use it, people might blame AMD rather than the motherboard vendor.
• Asm0deus Member EpicPosts: 4,404

  June 2019 edited June 2019

  I think this paragraph here answers the question.

  
  

  At CES 2019, AMD confirmed to Tom's Hardware that 300- and 400-series AM4 motherboards could support PCIe 4.0. AMD will not lock the out feature; instead, it will be up to motherboard vendors to validate and qualify the faster standard on their motherboards on a case-by-case basis. Motherboard vendors that do support the feature will enable it through BIOS updates, but those updates will come at the discretion of the vendor. AMD also cautioned that most motherboard vendors might not bother supporting the faster interface on existing motherboards.

  
  

  Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.

  
  
  
  
  
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348

  July 2019

  Apparently AMD does intend to block it entirely:
  
  https://www.anandtech.com/show/14639/no-amd-still-isnt-enabling-pcie-4-on-300400-series-boards
  
  They're going to disable PCI-E 4.0 in their new AGESA.  The only way to keep it enabled on the older boards is to use a beta BIOS and never upgrade it.  That does not strike me as a good idea.
  
  Most likely, it's a reliability issue.  If a motherboard can't handle PCI Express 4.0 because it wasn't designed to be able to handle it and then it becomes unreliable, too many end users would blame AMD.  AMD doesn't want to take that blame, so their fix is to disable it.
• Ridelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383

  July 2019

  Or it wants it’s piece of motherboard sales, just like Intel. I can’t really blame them.