Only with a PCIe switch chip. Those have been too expensive for consumer electronics since the PCIe 2 -> 3 transition. They're not getting cheaper with PCIe 4.0. Gen4 switches are also not widely available yet; X570 is probably going to be the first widely-available ASIC with Gen4 switching capability, but if you need to fan out more than four gen4 lanes, you're out of luck at the moment.
First thing that came to my mind was thinking that now I could run a GTX 2080ti on 8 4.0 lanes and have 4x 2x 4.0 lanes for NVMe on U.2 or TB3/USB 4.
But even if all that works in terms of bandwidth, unless somebody sells 4.0 switches at the price of glue logic, it's not going to happen: Avago/Broadcomm still wants their money back from the M&A spree that created them pretty much a monopoly in the PCIe switch space.
And that's also where I wonder if perhaps AMD would do well kicking another monopolist's shins by offering a slightly broader range of "SouthSwitches" instead of fixed-allocation Southbridges.
They could take 4, 8 or even 12 lanes, include 4.0 8x -> 3.0 16x/8-8/4-4-4-4 capabilities, slot-heavy or USB/TB heavy and you could have more than just one, different ones, too, on a motherboard.
Of course, that would cut into ThreadRipper territory and they are simply not big enough to diversify that much, but the whole motherboard area is in big need of an overhaul to match growing compute power and I/O demands coming out of a desktop CPU socket.
Intel now actually has all the motivation in the world to stay with PCIe 3 on the desktop for a long time, because they still define what mainstream is and would like to keep AMD away from feeding on PCIe 4.0 pastures as long as possible.
I could even imagine that Nvidia might not enable PCIe 4.0 8x for political reasons, even if they boast PCIe 4.0 for IBM Power.
Actually with Xe-Winter coming and AMD winning HPC contracts, Nvidia is in a very interesting position anyway.
I somehow hate it when politics gain over engineering, but it's fascinating nonetheless.
I have already heard about pci-e 4.0 SSDs. If nvidia supports pci-e 4.0 then they would probably support it at x8. They are made to auto negotiate the number of active lanes. I am not sure it would be spec compliant if they didn’t support falling back to x8 from x16. Intel probably doesn’t support pci-e 4.0 because they designed it into their 10 nm designs that have been delayed.
Yeeaah, now that AMD is competitive, it’s just mimicking Intel pricing.
I wonder whether the price for the flagship would settle at $500 or whether it would keep growing. If Intel decides to price its eventual 12/24 i9 at $600, AMD would surely price its 16/32 Ryzen 9 at $600 and so on.
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jjj - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
So they got the perf now and pushing prices up, kills all the excitement about this product.Unclear why you are excited about 8 cores at 65W, they've been offering that for 2 years now, why expect anything else this time around?
just4U - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
How so? A 12 core 3900x is reasonably priced. The 3700x will come in at the same price as a 2700x or damn close..SquarePeg - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link
akyp - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
No word on B550 motherboards?I don't want a fan on the motherboard nor do I want to spend well over $120 on one.
SaturnusDK - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
Lower end stuff is usually announced later.nils_ - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
So is it possible to split one PCIe 4.0 lane into two PCIe 3.0?Billy Tallis - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
Only with a PCIe switch chip. Those have been too expensive for consumer electronics since the PCIe 2 -> 3 transition. They're not getting cheaper with PCIe 4.0. Gen4 switches are also not widely available yet; X570 is probably going to be the first widely-available ASIC with Gen4 switching capability, but if you need to fan out more than four gen4 lanes, you're out of luck at the moment.abufrejoval - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
That's what I meant with "I/O starved".First thing that came to my mind was thinking that now I could run a GTX 2080ti on 8 4.0 lanes and have 4x 2x 4.0 lanes for NVMe on U.2 or TB3/USB 4.
But even if all that works in terms of bandwidth, unless somebody sells 4.0 switches at the price of glue logic, it's not going to happen: Avago/Broadcomm still wants their money back from the M&A spree that created them pretty much a monopoly in the PCIe switch space.
And that's also where I wonder if perhaps AMD would do well kicking another monopolist's shins by offering a slightly broader range of "SouthSwitches" instead of fixed-allocation Southbridges.
They could take 4, 8 or even 12 lanes, include 4.0 8x -> 3.0 16x/8-8/4-4-4-4 capabilities, slot-heavy or USB/TB heavy and you could have more than just one, different ones, too, on a motherboard.
Of course, that would cut into ThreadRipper territory and they are simply not big enough to diversify that much, but the whole motherboard area is in big need of an overhaul to match growing compute power and I/O demands coming out of a desktop CPU socket.
Intel now actually has all the motivation in the world to stay with PCIe 3 on the desktop for a long time, because they still define what mainstream is and would like to keep AMD away from feeding on PCIe 4.0 pastures as long as possible.
I could even imagine that Nvidia might not enable PCIe 4.0 8x for political reasons, even if they boast PCIe 4.0 for IBM Power.
Actually with Xe-Winter coming and AMD winning HPC contracts, Nvidia is in a very interesting position anyway.
I somehow hate it when politics gain over engineering, but it's fascinating nonetheless.
jamescox - Tuesday, May 28, 2019 - link
I have already heard about pci-e 4.0 SSDs. If nvidia supports pci-e 4.0 then they would probably support it at x8. They are made to auto negotiate the number of active lanes. I am not sure it would be spec compliant if they didn’t support falling back to x8 from x16. Intel probably doesn’t support pci-e 4.0 because they designed it into their 10 nm designs that have been delayed.yhselp - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
Yeeaah, now that AMD is competitive, it’s just mimicking Intel pricing.I wonder whether the price for the flagship would settle at $500 or whether it would keep growing. If Intel decides to price its eventual 12/24 i9 at $600, AMD would surely price its 16/32 Ryzen 9 at $600 and so on.