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PCI-E 4.0 / PCI-E Gen4 on ASUS Z490 Motherboards

crossbone
Level 7
So I am planning my new system and it should be future proof for the coming Rocket Lake CPUs (Intel 11 Series). So I need full support for PCI-E 4.0 for my GPU and my M.2 SSD when the new CPU is released in Q1 2021.

Other manufacturers happily show their PCIE 4 rdy motherboards (MSI, Gigabyte, Asrock) just ASUS is really quiet about this.
Which Motherboards from the Maximus XII Line support PCIE Gen 4?
I found an older chart where some guys analyzed several Z490 Motherboards and they came up with this chart:
https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Z490-Motherboards-PCIe-Gen-4.0-Support_ASUS_MSI_...

So is it just me, or does it look really grim for the ASUS Z490 lineup?
Whats with my preferred Board - the Maximux XII Apex? No support at all?

Looks like we have another Maximux IV situation here, where ASUS also missed the opportunity (Gen 2 to Gen 3 PCIE) and released several Motherboards in a second "-Gen3" Revision.

Discuss 🙂
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2 REPLIES 2

PerpetualCycle
Level 13
Looks grim. Could only be for the 16 lanes of CPU Graphics PCI-E anyhow. Z490 chipset PCI-E would still be the same PCI-E 3.0. And Intel DMI would be the same bottleneck.
of
You think about it. You can run graphics cards on 8 lanes PCI-E 3.0 instead of 6 with little impact to performance. So If you are running the graphics card with 16 lanes you should be fine even with the 30XX cards.

Only place it would matter performance-wise if you are using 8 lanes of the CPU graphics PCI-E for an nvme SSD.

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geneo wrote:
Looks grim. Could only be for the 16 lanes of CPU Graphics PCI-E anyhow. Z490 chipset PCI-E would still be the same PCI-E 3.0. And Intel DMI would be the same bottleneck.
of
You think about it. You can run graphics cards on 8 lanes PCI-E 3.0 instead of 6 with little impact to performance. So If you are running the graphics card with 16 lanes you should be fine even with the 30XX cards.

Only place it would matter performance-wise if you are using 8 lanes of the CPU graphics PCI-E for an nvme SSD.


Well for me every % counts, even if it is just 2-3% and several benchmarks show, that PCIE-3 16x to PCIE-4 16x is exactly that. I want to squeeze out every last bit of perfomance one could possibly get.
And of course a new PCIE-Gen4 NVME SSD like the new Samsung 980 Pro are also set for my system.

Well, guess I will switch camps this generation... unfortunately.