Nvidia apparently wants to do without an upgrade from PCIe to the RTX 4000.
Some links included on this page are affiliate links. Depending on the provider, GameStar receives a small commission for purchases made via these links without affecting the price.
More info.
Towards the end of 2022, things will get really exciting again on the graphics card market. We expect completely new GPU generations from both AMD and Nvidia in the form of the Radeon RX 7000 and Geforce RTX 4000 series. AMD apparently relies on a revolutionary design for 3D accelerators.
Nvidia is once again making huge changes to the number of cores, so that the future mid-range should be as fast as current high-end cards. That all sounds like a real next-gen. However, one feature of the new Nvidia graphics cards should remain current-gen. And that’s a good thing.
RTX 4000 should use PCIe 4.0 instead of PCIe 5.0
The message comes from the well-known leaker Kopite7kimi, whose forecasts are considered to be quite reliable. According to this, Nvidia does not upgrade the fast data protocol with the RTX 4000 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
PCIe dust:
link to Twitter content
Current mainboards for Intel processors as well as the upcoming AM5 platform from AMD already offer PCIe version 5.0, i.e. with a maximum total bandwidth of 128 gigabytes per second (64 GB/s in both directions in the case of x16). However, RTX 4000 should rely on PCIe 4.0, as is already the case with RTX 3000.
But no worry: Data Express is one of the last features that needs an upgrade. At least when it comes to performance in games. Even PCIe 4.0 is overkill in most cases, as long as 16 lanes (x16), i.e. 16 data lines, are connected.
What is PCIe?
PCIe connects peripheral devices such as graphics cards and M.2 NVMe SSDs to the CPU or chipset of a mainboard in order to transport data from A to B.
Graphics cards do not benefit from PCIe 5.0
Typically, graphics cards always have 16 data lines available. As already mentioned above, up to around 64 GB/s of data can be transmitted bidirectionally (in both directions at the same time, i.e. a total of 128 GB/s). However, 16 GB/s is completely sufficient for gaming, as the following test also proves:
PCI Express 4.0 vs 3.0
What does the new interface bring to games?
The possible waiver of PCIe 5.0 should also have a positive effect on pricing, since no new interface has to be developed. Even if it’s not about huge amounts. The technology is currently superfluous for graphics cards because so much bandwidth is simply not required.
RTX 3090 Ti – Check availability
Keeping costs down to the bare essentials is a good move in our opinion – if the rumor turns out to be true. But even if the cost advantages are limited, it makes sense to omit superfluous and at best promotionally effective techniques.
The only real advantage that PCIe 5.0 players would bring is that it saves data lines. PCIe 5.0 x4 is roughly equivalent to PCIe 3.0 x16. This left more lanes on the mainboard for other components such as M.2 NVMe SSDs.
Table of Contents
