No, AMD Still Isn’t Enabling PCIe 4 On 300/400 Series Boards
by Ryan Smith on July 12, 2019 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- PCIe 4.0
- Ryzen 3000
Following this week’s launch of AMD’s new Ryzen 3000 series of processors, reports have once again begun circulating that PCIe 4 will be available on some existing 300 & 400 series boards. This comes despite AMD’s official statement last month that they would not be allowing the feature on older boards, as PCIe 4’s tighter signal integrity standards would have led to, at best, a highly fragmented market where some boards work, some boards don’t, and some boards may be outright marginal. At the time the company stated that the feature would be stripped from the AGESA that goes into the final Ryzen 3000 launch BIOSes for older boards.
So, to get right to the heart of matters, I reached out to AMD PR this evening to find out what’s going on with PCIe 4 support. The short version then is that no, AMD’s plans have not changed: PCIe 4 support will be disabled in the shipping AGESA for these boards.
Our plan is unchanged. For the reliability and consistency reasons cited at Computex, we still intend to disable PCIe Gen 4 for pre-X570 motherboards. That AGESA is being released to motherboard manufacturers soon.
As things stand, any boards that currently support the feature would be using pre-release AGESAs, and as we’ve seen with our own BIOS issues, the Ryzen 3000 BIOS situation is still evolving fast. So with AMD intending to permanently disable the feature – and prevent any workarounds – AMD’s goals haven’t wavered. At best, the few boards that have beta BIOSes with the feature will lose them in the future, unless users opted to stick with an unsupported (and almost certainly buggy) BIOS.
Going forward, proper PCIe 4 support will continue to require an AMD 500-series board specifically designed to meet the signal integrity requirements for the higher speed standard. Right now, this includes boards based on AMD’s X570 chipset; and while the company hasn’t announced other 500-series chipsets, we’re expecting to see more in due time.
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quorm - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
Why can't people accept that some % of existing boards will run into problems if pcie4 is enabled. Because there are literally 0 products that benefit from pcie4, and problems may result, they will not enable it.TheUnhandledException - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
NVMe drives benefit from PCIe 4.0MamiyaOtaru - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
really too bad I have to get a 570 to get PCIe4. There's no way I am getting a mobo that requires active cooling on the chipset. I am done with fans smaller than 120mm. Loud, die easily, just forget that noise. Hopefully they get a process shrink on the chipset soonishkn00tcn - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
then replace it with a heatsink & a side panel case fan, wow... this isnt a closed glued apple productQasar - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
or replace it with a better fan ? i remember the chipset fans from the A64, my case fans were louder then thatTristanSDX - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
Signal intergrity is only formal, explanation, in reality AMD is hungry for cash. PCIE requires error correction, so data always is trasmited correctly, but with lower speed. Seems than older mobos handle transmision to well, with very rare errors that do not seriously slow donw transmission, so it must be disabled.kn00tcn - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
lower speed? then how can it be called pcie4!? what is the pointRichlet - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
And Intel and Nvidia *aren't* hungry for cash?Richlet - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
The prices they've charged up until now seem to suggest otherwise.Qasar - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
TristanSDX, " in reality AMD is hungry for cash " care to share your proof of this ? a link perhaps ?as Richlet said, intel and nivida aren't ? maybe you should keep buying their over priced products and give them your money instead ?