Pre-X570 AMD Motherboards Will Not Support PCI Express 4.0
No PCIe Gen4 Support for X470 or X370
AMD’s Senior Technical Marketing Manager Robert Hallock has clarified the PCI Express 4.0 situation for chipsets prior to the new X570: there isn’t one. In a comment posted in the r/AMD thread about the SweClockers report that AMD had cut PCI Express 4.0 support for 400 and 300 series motherboards, Hallock replied to a question about PCIe4 support from X470 boards:
“This is an error we are correcting. Pre-X570 boards will not support PCIe Gen 4. There’s no guarantee that older motherboards can reliably run the more stringent signaling requirements of Gen4, and we simply cannot have a mix of “yes, no, maybe” in the market for all the older motherboards. The potential for confusion is too high.
When final BIOSes are released for 3rd Gen Ryzen (AGESA 1000+), Gen4 will not be an option anymore. We wish we could’ve enabled this backwards, but the risk is too great.”
While it has been made clear that AMD’s partners will provide support for the new Ryzen 3000 series processors on the previous chipsets, it is now just as clear that to get in on the excitement surrounding PCIe Gen4 (and really fast SSDs like upcoming models from CORSAIR and GIGABYTE) will require a new motherboard purchase, as well.
That’s a shame, but if it doesn’t work consistently it’s the right call.
I can see both sides of this – with certain motherboards being able to claim PCIe 4.0 validation as a feature, etc…but would vendors want to do this rather than sell new X570 boards? I can’t imagine so.
I’m excited about X570 anyhow for everything else it offers (other than active cooling, that is). Looking forward to testing out storage and IO on the new platform.