Wednesday, September 7th 2011
MSI Calls Bluff on Gigabyte's PCIe Gen 3 Ready Claim
In August, Gigabyte made a claim that baffled at least MSI, that scores of its motherboards are Ready for Native PCIe Gen. 3. Along with the likes of ASRock, MSI was one of the first with motherboards featuring PCI-Express 3.0 slots, the company took the pains to educate buyers what PCI-E 3.0 is, and how to spot a motherboard that features it. MSI thinks that Gigabyte made a factual blunder bordering misinformation by claiming that as many as 40 of its motherboards are "Ready for Native PCIe Gen. 3." MSI decided to put its engineering and PR team to build a technically-sound presentation rebutting Gigabyte's claims.
More slides, details follow.
MSI begins by explaining that PCIe support isn't as easy as laying a wire between the CPU and the slot. It needs specifications-compliant lane switches and electrical components, and that you can't count on certain Gigabytes for future-proofing.
MSI did some PCI-Express electrical testing using a 22 nm Ivy Bridge processor sample.
MSI claims that apart from the G1.Sniper 2, none of Gigabyte's so-called "Ready for Native PCIe Gen. 3" motherboards are what the badge claims to be, and that the badge is extremely misleading to buyers. Time to refill the popcorn bowl.
Source:
MSI
MSI begins by explaining that PCIe support isn't as easy as laying a wire between the CPU and the slot. It needs specifications-compliant lane switches and electrical components, and that you can't count on certain Gigabytes for future-proofing.
286 Comments on MSI Calls Bluff on Gigabyte's PCIe Gen 3 Ready Claim
Because that completely defies logic.
If you mean, Gigabyte boards will never use Gen3 because the cards and CPU will have to switch down to Gen2 and by that way mean "support" then, sure, I believe you :)
How can you say Gigabytes boards wont work when there is no pcie3 cards yet.
But then your dismissing the news about uefi bios not working with ivy bridge immediately....
hmmm looks like I'm right Mr Dennis Achterberg Product Marketing Officer at MSI - Micro-star International CO., Ltd
www.linkedin.com/in/dennisachterberg
2, there are design rules for 22mm clue and Gen3 that were published long after those boards were designed and manufactured.
3, there are things called test boards and related measurement equipment that for instance Intel, NVIDIA and us use to verify boards, slots, cpu etc.
4, we haven't seen any signs during testing that a uefi update can't continue because there's only one chip. do you really really believe that Intel would want to do a recall on those millions of sandy bridge maonboards out there?
Sent from my HTC
Business wise it also doesn't make sense for Microsoft to demand something of mainboards that would limit it only to the latest generation of compatible mainboards.
I.o.w. don't worry.
The screenshot with the gigabyte motherboard?
Let's make a bet: I bet that the first pci-e 3.0 gpu on the market will have the same performance in real world gaming on fake PCI-e 3.0 gigabyte motherboards as on your MSI real PCI-e 3.0 motherboard
22nm CPUs on GBT boards with the advertised BIOS'es switch DOWN when a Gen3 board is inserted.
So all we did was get a gigabyte board, put a bios on it that gigabyte advertises and then see if it would actually work as advertised (and required by Intel.)
And you've seen the end result :)
So far the news sounds as if intel have made another mistake and UEFI needs a complete re-wipe which according to some news is only able to be done above service or end user level (so a recall or just a stuff it buy the next platform).
The UEFI issue you are talking about sounds like the "Windows 8 NEEDS UEFI" if your saying this is not the case please speak to your counterparts as they are saying you need UEFI for X86 hardware.
This is also incorrect only ARM platforms require UEFI for Win 8.
How I know? Because (for instance) Intel already tested and certified our boards.
Capiche?
They retroactively applied this to all older boards, hoping no one would notice. (fool customers, they're really good at it)
Gigabyte probably DOES have an 22nm CPU sample AND PCI-e 3.0 testing cards at the time of the announcement, otherwise they wouldn't have the G1.Sniperv2.
Is it clear for you this way?
(and no, I don't know dazz!)
GB is a full intel Partner, they didn't make any promises if you read their stuff correctly. with the VRZone announcment you might not even see PCI-E 3.0 on IVY or even be able to run IVY on current boards.