Any idea when we'll start seeing PCIe 4.0 motherboards? I don't believe that Intel is introducing them with CoffeeLake and I haven't heard anything from AMD about Zen 2 and them either.

Any idea when we'll start seeing PCIe 4.0 motherboards? I don't believe that Intel is introducing them with CoffeeLake and I haven't heard anything from AMD about Zen 2 and them either.

I think it's more about setting the specs in stone rather than something anyone actually intends to implement. It's not uncommon for companies to invest in technologies they have no intention to use for a long while, though, usually that's for anticompetitive reasons - I'm not sure why PCI-SIG is doing this. Maybe to prevent either Intel or AMD from being lazy and/or pushing their own agenda? Not like it matters anyway. To my knowledge, nothing saturates 3.0 @ 16x. I also don't know of any M.2 SSDs that saturate the 4x lanes they get. What does intrigue me is the 5.0 1x slot will have the same amount of bandwidth as the 16x from gen 1.

Not like it matters anyway. To my knowledge, nothing saturates 3.0 @ 16x. I also don't know of any M.2 SSDs that saturate the 4x lanes they get.

if i remember correctly, even the GTX1080 did not fully saturate 2.0 @ 16x, don't know about the titan xp or 1080ti they may do. i know we was getting close to it... so 5.0 is insane, i think these willl be more useless for the x1/x4 pcie lanes which can be saturated as you stated by m.2 and PCIE SSD cards. Find it ammusing they speak about 5.0 when 4.0 is still not in the mainstream... or anywhere far as i have heard (any servers or super computers with it maybe?)

if i remember correctly, even the GTX1080 did not fully saturate 2.0 @ 16x, don't know about the titan xp or 1080ti they may do. i know we was getting close to it... so 5.0 is insane, i think these willl be more useless for the x1/x4 pcie lanes which can be saturated as you stated by m.2 and PCIE SSD cards. Find it ammusing they speak about 5.0 when 4.0 is still not in the mainstream... or anywhere far as i have heard (any servers or super computers with it maybe?)

From what I recall, I think I remember seeing a benchmark of the 1080Ti on various PCIe slots, and you lose a few FPS on gen 2 on some tests. It's only maybe a 2% performance loss though, so I'd say gen 2 has held on real strong. I know there are some SSDs out there that can saturate the bandwidth much easier. To me, the real interest of newer PCIe generations is the performance for the 1x and M.2 slots. We're approaching times where it should be possible to comfortably do 1080p gaming on a 1x slot. There are also products like this: http://amfeltec.com/products/flexible-x4-pci-express-4-way-splitter/ where if you don't need all the extra bandwidth for a single card, you can take advantage of more expansion cards instead. I'd be really interested to see if there's a splitter out there that could, for example, convert a single gen 3.0 16x slot into two 2.0 16x slots.

if i remember correctly, even the GTX1080 did not fully saturate 2.0 @ 16x, don't know about the titan xp or 1080ti they may do. i know we was getting close to it... so 5.0 is insane, i think these willl be more useless for the x1/x4 pcie lanes which can be saturated as you stated by m.2 and PCIE SSD cards. Find it ammusing they speak about 5.0 when 4.0 is still not in the mainstream... or anywhere far as i have heard (any servers or super computers with it maybe?)

It is not about saturation of bandwidth or need to have higher bandwidth per GPU (You do not anyway). It is about selling higher-end platform. Why would you pay extra for 28/44 PCIe 3.0 lanes when you can get around same bandwidth from 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes? Think about it. PCIe 2.0 x16 is comparable to PCIe 4.0 x4.

Why would you pay extra for 28/44 PCIe 3.0 lanes when you can get around same bandwidth from 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes? Think about it. PCIe 2.0 x16 is comparable to PCIe 4.0 x4.

Oh i know, it is looking to be amazing, the fact we wont need as many PCIe lanes or least being able to not worry about them would be amazing. It's a shame we have not got PCIe 4.0 yet even though it was announced many years ago, maybe m.2 and PCIe ssds might push for this to become a thing in Zen 2/ Cannonlake? Least one can hope 😀

From what I recall, I think I remember seeing a benchmark of the 1080Ti on various PCIe slots, and you lose a few FPS on gen 2 on some tests. It's only maybe a 2% performance loss though, so I'd say gen 2 has held on real strong.

In reality, Gen 1 holds up fairly well as well. Bandwidth just isn't so much of an issue when it comes to graphics cards it seems. Not saying more isn't welcomed, just isn't the most important thing, by far. http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/pci-express-scaling-game-performance-analysis-review,2.html http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?ct=articles&action=file&id=14856&admin=0a8fcaad6b03da6a6895d1ada2e171002a287bc1 http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?ct=articles&action=file&id=14861&admin=0a8fcaad6b03da6a6895d1ada2e171002a287bc1 I understand this isn't using a 1080ti, and the difference could be larger (though i don't think it would be) but if someone was gaming on a PCI-Express 1 16x with a 1080ti, they would likely get less performance then on 2.0, and 3.0 to a lesser degree, but it would be completely and totally playable.

You recently done an article reviewing PCI-E bandwidth performance. My motherboard is PCI-E 3.0 ready but my CPU is holding me back on PCI-E 2.0. I see no reason to upgrade my CPU to unlock the PCI-E bandwidth thus far. I'm looking forward to an updated review when PCI-E 4 debuts.

if i remember correctly, even the GTX1080 did not fully saturate 2.0 @ 16x, don't know about the titan xp or 1080ti they may do. i know we was getting close to it... so 5.0 is insane, i think these willl be more useless for the x1/x4 pcie lanes which can be saturated as you stated by m.2 and PCIE SSD cards. Find it ammusing they speak about 5.0 when 4.0 is still not in the mainstream... or anywhere far as i have heard (any servers or super computers with it maybe?)

4.0 is not in supercomputers. Today's best supercomputers like the Fujitsu PrimeHPC line use proprietary interconnects, many of them optical, using custom protocols. NVLink is here already, with CPU/GPU links coming soon. Having accelerators hanging off the PCI bus is typically bad for efficiency. Most current heterogeneous supercomputers are somewhere between 55 and 65% computationally efficient, where as an all CPU homogenous system like the K or PrimeHPC FX10 and 100 are over 90% computationally efficient in HPL Rmax/Rpeak FLOPS. Then there is the whole issue of PCI-e accelerators talking to CPUs and main memory causing such systems to perform worse in more relevant benchmarks than HPL, such as Graph500 and HPCG. Currently the top performer in HPCG regardless of system size is the K Computer. Based on system size % of peak HPL in HPCG, the NEC SX-ACE is by far the most efficient, with about 12%. K, PrimeHPC and SX-ACE are all homogeneous CPU only systems, with no real use of PCI-e busses. Its also important to remember that latency, not just bandwidth, matters a lot when talking about large high performance systems.

we do not have pci-x 4 yet and they are talking about 5 ? i would have been more excited to see news like that for sata 4 ! sata 3 we saturated that one since 2012 or something no ? now though throw 1 pci-x 5 lanes on sata name it sata 5 with 3.9gb max throughput and then let's watch all the ssd companies battling it out to max it first! although and 1xpci-x 4 lane on sata 4 with 2gb throughput will be also great :P

The above benchmark shows around a 10% performance drop at max speed. Imagine then an overclocked 1080ti...what would it be, 25% as you are greatly exceeding the bandwidth and then if you have a typical z170x motherboard and ypu are running sli, half bandwidth per card clearly faster pcid lanes are needed right now yet we haven't heard anything about when pci 4.0 will be implemented. M.2 drives are already fast as hell and I imagine by 2 time they will be twice as fast as now The samsung 950pro was 25ppmv/s. The 960 pro is 3500mb/s. If 4.0 is twice as fast and the drives are at the point of saturation of bandwidth. You could have a board with 6 m.2 slots all running at pci-e 4.0 2x speed which would be the same as 3.0 4x. For my bext build. Not only do I want to have no mechanical drives. I want to have no sata drives at all. It is an archaic interface and there is no point to it this day in age. Hopefully faster pci-e will get us there.

The above benchmark shows around a 10% performance drop at max speed. Imagine then an overclocked 1080ti...what would it be, 25% as you are greatly exceeding the bandwidth and then if you have a typical z170x motherboard and ypu are running sli, half bandwidth per card clearly faster pcid lanes are needed right now yet we haven't heard anything about when pci 4.0 will be implemented.

Tech Powerup has a pretty extensive article benchmarking various generations and lanes of PCIe with a FuryX. Usually AMD GPUs utilize more PCIe bandwidth per FPS than Nvidia, so the FuryX is a good test. You'll find PCIe 2.0 @ 16x is almost unanimously good enough to support high-performance GPUs at any resolution. A 1080Ti likely still uses more bandwidth, but, I don't suspect it'd regularly saturate enough 2.0 bandwidth to frame rates below 60FPS. Generally speaking, the higher the screen resolution is, the less bandwidth you're using, because the GPU has to work harder to process the frames and it can't "ask for more".

M.2 drives are already fast as hell and I imagine by 2 time they will be twice as fast as now If 4.0 is twice as fast and the drives are at the point of saturation of bandwidth. You could have a board with 6 m.2 slots all running at pci-e 4.0 2x speed which would be the same as 3.0 4x. It is an archaic interface and there is no point to it this day in age. Hopefully faster pci-e will get us there.

It doesn't matter if M.2 drives get faster because they're already faster than we need them to be. In real-world tests, it's uncommon for a human to perceive a performance difference between a high-end M.2 drive and a mid-range SATA SSD. Where the bandwidth really comes in handy is sequential read and write speeds, but, that's only as good as the slowest part in your system. So whether you're downloading data from the internet, a camera, another PC on your network, you're going to be held back by any of those sources. If you're rendering something like a raw video, the CPU may be a bottleneck. If synthetic benchmarks, copying files to the same drive, and theoretical performance is your top priority then by all means, buy into a drive based on PCIe 4.0, but to call SATA archaic is inaccurate.

Tech Powerup has a pretty extensive article benchmarking various generations and lanes of PCIe with a FuryX. Usually AMD GPUs utilize more PCIe bandwidth per FPS than Nvidia, so the FuryX is a good test. You'll find PCIe 2.0 @ 16x is almost unanimously good enough to support high-performance GPUs at any resolution. A 1080Ti likely still uses more bandwidth, but, I don't suspect it'd regularly saturate enough 2.0 bandwidth to frame rates below 60FPS. Generally speaking, the higher the screen resolution is, the less bandwidth you're using, because the GPU has to work harder to process the frames and it can't "ask for more". It doesn't matter if M.2 drives get faster because they're already faster than we need them to be. In real-world tests, it's uncommon for a human to perceive a performance difference between a high-end M.2 drive and a mid-range SATA SSD. Where the bandwidth really comes in handy is sequential read and write speeds, but, that's only as good as the slowest part in your system. So whether you're downloading data from the internet, a camera, another PC on your network, you're going to be held back by any of those sources. If you're rendering something like a raw video, the CPU may be a bottleneck. If synthetic benchmarks, copying files to the same drive, and theoretical performance is your top priority then by all means, buy into a drive based on PCIe 4.0, but to call SATA archaic is inaccurate.

Sata is archaic.nwhen you can buy the current version of samsungs pci e drives for the same price as the sata version and a game install for a 60 gig game can take a lifetime when installing from a backup etc as in a full hour...why would anyone on earth deliberately choosenthe drive that takes twice as long when it costs nothing for the faster drive. I have a 500-something gig 950 pro for a main drive and the time it takes to install games and copy media files to my 1tb 840 pro takes literally twice as long....maybe more..... I plan to buy a 2tb 960 pro in 4 weeks and copy my media to my 840 pro to eliminate the mechanical drive. It they sell a slower 970 pro or whatver they decide to call itnin a 4tb drive, then I will get massiven gaina not just from some theoritical-but-rarely-used type of load but from the typical use of the drive for me. Even if there was a 1% performance increase for an m.2 drive, it requires no power cable and no sata able, is significanfly smaller and doesn't require any drivers installed to function on a fresh windows install....as I just discovered. It makes your case management easier; you could have a no cables build minus the gpu 6+2bpins.

Sata is archaic.nwhen you can buy the current version of samsungs pci e drives for the same price as the sata version and a game install for a 60 gig game can take a lifetime when installing from a backup etc as in a full hour...why would anyone on earth deliberately choosenthe drive that takes twice as long when it costs nothing for the faster drive.

Do you have sources on any of this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just like to see the evidence. Most new PCIe SSDs are not cheaper than SATA ones, or at least not faster if priced lower. As for why someone would choose SATA, I am a good example: my PC is an ITX build and has 2 drives. Not only do I not have a choice to use PCIe SSDs, but most ITX boards (including my own) only supports 1 M.2 slot. Also, M.2 drives are a lot more expensive once you get toward the 1TB+ range.

I have a 500-something gig 950 pro for a main drive and the time it takes to install games and copy media files to my 1tb 840 pro takes literally twice as long....maybe more.....

Are both drives utilized the same amount? Are they the same age? Keep in mind Windows is pretty terrible at SSD maintenance. There was someone else on these forums who commented about a USB 3.0 flash drive that lost most of it's performance despite not being that old, and it turned out that re-formatting it made it work like new.

Even if there was a 1% performance increase for an m.2 drive, it requires no power cable and no sata able, is significanfly smaller and doesn't require any drivers installed to function on a fresh windows install....as I just discovered. It makes your case management easier; you could have a no cables build minus the gpu 6+2bpins.

Cables never bothered me (you do NOT want to see the birds nest that is the back of my desk), but to each their own.

Do you have sources on any of this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just like to see the evidence. Most new PCIe SSDs are not cheaper than SATA ones, or at least not faster if priced lower. As for why someone would choose SATA, I am a good example: my PC is an ITX build and has 2 drives. Not only do I not have a choice to use PCIe SSDs, but most ITX boards (including my own) only supports 1 M.2 slot. Also, M.2 drives are a lot more expensive once you get toward the 1TB+ range. Are both drives utilized the same amount? Are they the same age? Keep in mind Windows is pretty terrible at SSD maintenance. There was someone else on these forums who commented about a USB 3.0 flash drive that lost most of it's performance despite not being that old, and it turned out that re-formatting it made it work like new. Cables never bothered me (you do NOT want to see the birds nest that is the back of my desk), but to each their own.

What do you mean sources....I just did a fresh install a few days ago and on my last install when I ran out of spacenon my 950 pro I installed the rest on my 840 pro which is obviously a sata drive and the install time was way slower for all games and all of them were 25-50gb. Whether or not you ar about cable space is totally irrelevant, it is a fact that m.2 drives are about 1/6 of the size and require no cables or drivers installed to function. That makes them easier to install software wise, take up less s l ace in the case and require 2 less cables. That makes them far superior. Imagine is with the new pci-e standard 4.0 you could get 300watt through the pci-e slot alone....there isn't a single person alive who would say 'well cables aren't a problem for me'....because simplicity is always better, ergonomic is always better, and faster is apways getter. You can buy a 2tb samsung 960 pro for only a fraction more than the 850 pro was 2 years ago, sata ssd makers pumped the breaks on drive capacity and speed, but they have no excuse now. There is no reason for someone buying an ssd to choose a sata drive unless they have an ancient motherboard and want to to save maybe 10% for which they will pay a performance penalty of more than 10%. Obviously right now for older pcs that don't support m.2 sata ssds make sense. But the new x399 motherboards support 4 m.2 drives and the x299 boards support 3. So sataless builds will be here very soon.

Both NVMe over PCI-e and SATA NAND are not fast enough for some use cases, which is why people are eagerly awaiting nonvolatile memory that is significantly faster than NAND like XPoint PCM, which is roughly 10x the performance of NVMe NAND when its used in an NVMe PCI-e drive itself. It should be able to perform roughly 100x faster than an NVMe NAND SSD when its used in its upcoming DIMM format. The whole "we dont need anything faster" has never been true with computers. This is especially true of memory and storage, which are two of the biggest bottlenecks in most systems. That's also why youre seeing things like Nantero's NRAM and Everspin's STT-MRAM being developed. Also, arguing that SATA is fast enough based on some hypothetical user not being able to notice a difference isn't helpful. Start using the drives in a way that is really taxing on the I/O subsystem and you'll probably see that the sustained performance and latency of the drive with the faster interface is significantly better. Windows 8 and newer is also pretty good at SSD maintenence actually. The real issue would be with some low end consumer level drives having little or no overprovisioning, so they slow down as they fill.

What do you mean sources....I just did a fresh install a few days ago and on my last install when I ran out of spacenon my 950 pro I installed the rest on my 840 pro which is obviously a sata drive and the install time was way slower for all games and all of them were 25-50gb.

The reason I ask is because personal anecdotes are relatively meaningless when it comes to making a point. There are plenty of SATA SSDs that keep up just fine, and there are plenty of M.2 SSDs that are slower than SATA drives. Keep in mind too - most M.2 drives are at based on SATA to some degree; some are entirely based on SATA. Same goes for some PCIe drives.

Whether or not you ar about cable space is totally irrelevant, it is a fact that m.2 drives are about 1/6 of the size and require no cables or drivers installed to function. That makes them easier to install software wise, take up less s l ace in the case and require 2 less cables. That makes them far superior.

If you're making the argument that fewer cables and less space makes it better, how is my comment irrelevant? I'm saying that smaller and fewer cables does not make them better. For example: PCIe and M.2 drives are not hot-swappable and you usually need a screwdriver to get them in and out. In many cases, an M.2 drive is located in a place that may involve removing other hardware, such as the GPU or the entire motherboard. For some people, that is incredibly inconvenient.

Imagine is with the new pci-e standard 4.0 you could get 300watt through the pci-e slot alone....there isn't a single person alive who would say 'well cables aren't a problem for me'....because simplicity is always better, ergonomic is always better, and faster is apways getter.

You have a really bad tendency to speak as though your opinions are everyone's. Just because you don't like something, that doesn't mean it bothers everyone else. And no, simplicity is not always better because not everything in life is that simple. Case in point: if making everything was simpler was better, your i7 wouldn't exist, because it is far more complex than most CPUs that came before it. Even within it's own generation, it is literally more complex than an i5 or an i3. It allows you to do more complex things. Otherwise, why would you get it?

You can buy a 2tb samsung 960 pro for only a fraction more than the 850 pro was 2 years ago, sata ssd makers pumped the breaks on drive capacity and speed, but they have no excuse now. There is no reason for someone buying an ssd to choose a sata drive unless they have an ancient motherboard and want to to save maybe 10% for which they will pay a performance penalty of more than 10%.

How are SSD prices 2 years ago relevant? A 2TB 960 Pro is still expensive. You need to get your arrogance in check.

Obviously right now for older pcs that don't support m.2 sata ssds make sense. But the new x399 motherboards support 4 m.2 drives and the x299 boards support 3.

For someone who so adamantly thinks M.2 is the cure-all to SSDs, I'm surprised you think older PCs can't use them. There are PCIe to M.2 converters. Your comment about the X399 and X299 motherboards are helping me understand you better. No wonder you think M.2 is the only option - you act like these chipsets are going to be affordable to just anyone

So sataless builds will be here very soon.

I assure you, they won't. You may have a hard time believing this, but many people still use optical drives and mechanical HDDs (yes, they're actually still relevant, despite your needs). Keep in mind - I don't care if you think M.2 drives are better. I understand where you're coming from to think that these drives are the future. What bothers me is how much you insist that your perspective is the truth. You need to keep a more open mind to those who have different needs than you, and those who don't care about waiting an extra 1 or 2 seconds for their game to load.

You can buy a 2tb samsung 960 pro for only a fraction more than the 850 pro was 2 years ago, sata ssd makers pumped the breaks on drive capacity and speed, but they have no excuse now. There is no reason for someone buying an ssd to choose a sata drive unless they have an ancient motherboard and want to to save maybe 10% for which they will pay a performance penalty of more than 10%.

Except for, you know, the cost? I bought an MX300 750GB SATA SSD for $100, when has there ever been even remotely the same deal for a M.2 SSD 750GB for even around $100? I bought a 6TB HDD for $250, because you know speed isn't everything if the storage doesn't amount to what you need. Where are SSDs, let alone M.2 drives in 6TB forms for $250? I have a 750GB MX300, a 500GB MX100, and a 6TB HDD. I had bought a 512GB 960 Evo, figured i have a motherboard with m.2 now why not try it, and found it to be pretty much worthless for my needs and why the hell did i just spend $320 on 512GB of storage that is faster, yes, but didn't change how my computer works in the end? So i sent it back, because i didn't need the extra speed. Yet you're here trying to tell everyone that everyone does need that speed. What? How does that make sense? I don't doubt your needs or your experience, but they are just that, YOUR needs and YOUR experience, not everyones. Also, the 2TB 960 Pro is ridiculously high priced, not entirely sure why you would use that as your example.... Now, if your point is that if the costs were not different between systems and all drives you could get were as fast as humanly possible and there were not limitations such as having to use M.2 slots, sure, then everyone would use them and there would be no use for slower drives, because why if it the costs are the same and its not difficult to use, but that's not reality and that will likely never be reality.

For my bext build. Not only do I want to have no mechanical drives. I want to have no sata drives at all.

My current system only has a single drive, a Samsung 960 Evo M.2 NVMe SSD. It's undoubtedly convenient not having to deal with SATA and power cables, and I can see this becoming the standard one day. However, at the current time, NVMe drives are just another option. Although their performance greatly exceeds SATA SSDs there is very little noticeable difference in a typical consumer workload, including games. My secondary system uses SATA SSDs and I don't really notice a significant difference between the two, as far as storage performance goes. The extra bandwidth may be necessary for certain users, but the majority would see no real benefit (for now). In short, NVMe drives may be the future, but SATA SSDs are still very relevant today.