Monday, January 27th 2020

Intel 400-series Chipset Motherboards to Lack PCIe Gen 4.0, Launch Pushed to Q2

Intel's upcoming 400-series desktop chipset will lack support for PCI-Express gen 4.0. The motherboards will stick to gen 3.0 for both the main x16 PEG slots wired to the LGA1200 socket, and general purpose PCIe lanes from the PCH, according to a Tom's Hardware report. It was earlier expected that 400-series chipset motherboards will come with preparation for PCIe gen 4.0, so even if the upcoming 10th gen "Comet Lake" desktop processors lacked gen 4.0 root-complexes, the boards would be fully ready for the new bus standard in 11th gen "Rocket Lake" desktop processors.

10th gen "Comet Lake" desktop processors are built on 14 nm process, and implement Intel's current-gen CPU core design Intel has been implementing since 6th gen "Skylake." It's only with 11th gen "Rocket Lake" that the mainstream desktop platform could see a new CPU core design, with the company reportedly back-porting "Willow Cove" CPU cores to the 14 nm process. "Rocket Lake" is also expected to feature a small Gen12 iGPU with 32 execution units, and a new-gen uncore component that implements PCIe gen 4.0. PCIe gen 4.0 doubles bandwidth over gen 3.0, and while only a handful GPUs support it, the standard is made popular by a new generation of M.2 NVMe SSDs that are able to utilize the added bandwidth to push sequential transfer rates beyond M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 limitations.
It is also being reported that Intel has delayed the launch of 10th gen Core desktop processors and 400-series chipset motherboards to Q2-2020, to as early as April. Motherboards based on Intel 400-series chipset were the most notable absentees at the 2020 International CES, and it's rumored that a last-minute decision to delay the platform's launch caused exhibitors to box up their Z490 chipset motherboards. With an April launch, "Comet Lake" will lead Intel's mainstream desktop product line for at least three quarters. Intel is expected to debut 11th gen "Rocket Lake" in the 2021 CES, unless something changes then.
Source: Tom's Hardware
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54 Comments on Intel 400-series Chipset Motherboards to Lack PCIe Gen 4.0, Launch Pushed to Q2

#26
kapone32
Would anyone in their right mind get one of these when the only thing different from Z390 will be the processor?
Posted on Reply
#27
TechLurker
birdieNow on to the serious question: how many people out there really need PCI-E 4.0 speeds/performance? 0.1%? 0.2%?

-snip-

And let's talk about products utilizing PCIe4 at the moment. AMD Navi GPUs despite featuring this interface gain 0% of performance due to using it.

M.2 NVMe SSDs get twice as fast however from what I've seen all of them require massive heatsinks and dissipate enormous amounts of heat. And how often do you need to write/read data at speeds above 5 freaking gigabytes per second?
To the first which coincides with the M2 part, those whose time = money, and those are the same people who buy PCIe 4.0 x16 NVME cards with 4 M2 SSDs per card and a fully-decked out sTRX4 or EPYC mobo to read/write and work with large datasets, bandwidth permitting. I'm not one of those users, but scientists, researchers, video editors, engineers, and even those using one machine to run several Virtual Workstations all greatly benefit.

As for PCIe 4.0, the 4Gb 5500 does a lot better on it than on PCIe 3.0, due to the quirk of only having 4Gb to work with, thus resorting to using slower system RAM as-needed. But it is true that there isn't yet any mainstream products for 4.0 past the NVMe, although NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel have all committed to their next gen products (mainly GPUs, but some interconnect standards too) being capable of using 4.0 (and even 5.0) in different ways.

That aside, complaining about it at all is a moot point; AMD has said they're aiming at PCIe 5.0 with Zen 4, and Intel originally was planning to skip out on PCIe 4.0 and go straight for 5.0 before continued delays and setbacks had them adding implementation of 4.0 into their near-future chipsets. That will provide enough future-proofing for several years, and may last for a long while considering how long it took for products to develop on PCIe 3.0 (and in a few situations, actually max out the bandwidth).
Posted on Reply
#28
TheoneandonlyMrK
hatEntry level? That's ridiculous. There's already a mainstream and a HEDT platform...

Anyway, I'm fine with Willow Cove being backported to 14nm. Intel has proven that their 14nm++++++++(++++++++)+^9999 process can compete with AMD's design on TSMC's 7nm. As long as it performs better than its predecessor and doesn't have a mountain of security flaws, it should be a success.



I think "twice as good for a fifth of the price" is a bit of a reach, but for sure, AMD has made leaps and bounds of progress. We're at a stage now where one doesn't conclusively beat the other.
That's debatable
birdieI have a perfectly working PC from 2011 with a Sandy Bridge CPU and I won't throw it out just because it's missing M.2 ports or PCIe4. Again you disagreed only to disagree without addressing the borked implementation from AMD and the fact that maybe Intel shouldn't release equally broken products.

Future proofing makes sense only when you know exactly how it will benefit you in the future. PCIe4 does not have anything to it aside from increased IO throughput which is necessary for all the ten people in the entire world who depend on it.

Speaking of the ports you mentioned. PCI and PCI-E have enormous advantages over ISA and AGP that's why they were more or less completely replaced and abandoned by the industry. PCIe4 over PCIe3 again brings very little if anything for 99.99% of people out there. Most people in the world don't have M.2 NVMe drives at all and couldn't care less about the performance of their disks.

If you wanted to just say AMD is great and Intel is bad - I get it. If you have some deeper insight, please let me know.
you need to drag your head out your 2011 ass, just because your doing the same shit you have for the last 8 years on that computer that obviously does what you and your perspective wants day in ,day out does not mean others don't need, or want more speed, I need pciex 4 over USB , never mind on the motherboard, not that i even have pciex4 but I'm not delusional about its utility, just skint.

lack of imagination and foresight evidenced on a tech forum.
Posted on Reply
#29
kapone32
TechLurkerTo the first which coincides with the M2 part, those whose time = money, and those are the same people who buy PCIe 4.0 x16 NVME cards with 4 M2 SSDs per card and a fully-decked out sTRX4 or EPYC mobo to read/write and work with large datasets, bandwidth permitting. I'm not one of those users, but scientists, researchers, video editors, engineers, and even those using one machine to run several Virtual Workstations all greatly benefit.

As for PCIe 4.0, the 4Gb 5500 does a lot better on it than on PCIe 3.0, due to the quirk of only having 4Gb to work with, thus resorting to using slower system RAM as-needed. But it is true that there isn't yet any mainstream products for 4.0 past the NVMe, although NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel have all committed to their next gen products (mainly GPUs, but some interconnect standards too) being capable of using 4.0 (and even 5.0) in different ways.

That aside, complaining about it at all is a moot point; AMD has said they're aiming at PCIe 5.0 with Zen 4, and Intel originally was planning to skip out on PCIe 4.0 and go straight for 5.0 before continued delays and setbacks had them adding implementation of 4.0 into their near-future chipsets. That will provide enough future-proofing for several years, and may last for a long while considering how long it took for products to develop on PCIe 3.0 (and in a few situations, actually max out the bandwidth).
In my opinion PCIE_4.0 does not matter for GPUs. You are right though. I would love to see an increase at QD32 for PCIE _4.0 vs 3.0, then NVME drives would make more sense to the average person. I have been a proponent of NVME but I have become sated. Epic lets you see how fast the drive is writing data to the drive you pick. When I am downloading a game to my NVME drives I see up to 600 MB/s writes but there are many times the drives drop to 100MB/s or less. When I am using my SSD(s) there is zero drops and I get a consistent 450 to 500 MB/s with no dropoff. There is a caveat though,if you do any kind of rendering or video production NVME RAID on PCI_E 3.0 is insane, I am sure on PCI_E 4.0 it would be godlike.
Posted on Reply
#30
Super XP
gamefoo21Guess it is a chipset issue and not a processor side issue.

Doesn't make sense that Intel would nerf the boards. Unless it's pure marketing but that doesn't make a ton of sense but they did artificially limit Optane support for quite awhile.

So Intel pride maybe? Making boards 3.0 only does lower manufacturing costs.
Intel's current lot of processors are incapable of running on a PCIe4 based chipset. I mean why else would they abandon the opportunity to innovate? It's bad enough Intel CPUs run HOT and require lots of Watts. Running so high accelerates the CPUs decrease the CPUs life span No?

I'm being hard on Intel because the Intel hounds of Hell came out back when AMD released the Bulldozer design, and the company got mangled by Intel this and Intel that.

Give credit where credit is due, AMD implements PCIe4 and people love it, as there M.2 drives run as efficient as they can get.

Keeping PCIe4 away from the mobile market makes total sense, eventually a modified mobile version of the tech will become a welcomed addition.
Posted on Reply
#31
Makaveli
birdieNow on to the serious question: how many people out there really need PCI-E 4.0 speeds/performance? 0.1%? 0.2%?

Why isn't anyone in this topic talking about the fact that AMD has botched PCIe4 implementation in Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs that why their upcoming APUs based on Zen 2 will not feature PCIe4 support?

What's wrong about it, you'll ask? Well, your X570 chipset idles at 10W while doing nothing and your Ryzen 3000 CPU has the minimum power consumption around 17 freaking watts due to to its IO PCIe4 core which is seemingly unable to ever enter idle mode.

That's 27W while doing pretty much nothing.
lol my Corsair AX850 80+ Titanium psu is sweating from that 27w idle.

Explain more to me about this botched PCIe4 implementation.

birdieM.2 NVMe SSDs get twice as fast however from what I've seen all of them require massive heatsinks and dissipate enormous amounts of heat. And how often do you need to write/read data at speeds above 5 freaking gigabytes per second?
Look at that Massive M2 heatsink taking up so much room in my build and blocking everything.

Corsair MP600 Gen 4


Drive temps 47c crazy hot.

Posted on Reply
#32
ppn
pcie4 is 2x expensive, so you are paying for speed, I prefer storage 2TB pcie3 instead of pcie4 1TB.
Posted on Reply
#33
Makaveli
ppnpcie4 is 2x expensive, so you are paying for speed, I prefer storage 2TB pcie3 instead of pcie4 1TB.
The price for a 2TB pcie3 drive is similar price to a 2TB pcie 4, and right now pci4 drives are cheaper.


pcie 3 $599USD

www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-2tb/p/N82E16820147715?Description=Samsung%20970evo%20&cm_re=Samsung_970evo-_-20-147-715-_-Product

pcie 4 $409USD

www.newegg.com/corsair-force-mp600-2-tb/p/N82E16820236549?Description=corsair%20MP600%20&cm_re=corsair_MP600-_-20-236-549-_-Product

The price performance ratio is best with 1TB drives currently once you hit 2TB they jack the prices up quite abit. So mixed storage works best for my budget. 1TB pci4 + Sata SSD for bulk storage works better right now.
Posted on Reply
#34
Super XP
ppnpcie4 is 2x expensive, so you are paying for speed, I prefer storage 2TB pcie3 instead of pcie4 1TB.
And that's what is great, Choice to choose what you want and what fits your budget / M.2 speed desire.
MakaveliThe price for a 2TB pcie3 drive is similar price to a 2TB pcie 4, and right now pci4 drives are cheaper.


pcie 3 $599USD

www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-2tb/p/N82E16820147715?Description=Samsung%20970evo%20&cm_re=Samsung_970evo-_-20-147-715-_-Product

pcie 4 $409USD

www.newegg.com/corsair-force-mp600-2-tb/p/N82E16820236549?Description=corsair%20MP600%20&cm_re=corsair_MP600-_-20-236-549-_-Product

The price performance ratio is best with 1TB drives currently once you hit 2TB they jack the prices up quite abit. So mixed storage works best for my budget. 1TB pci4 + Sata SSD for bulk storage works better right now.
2TB M.2 prices should go down a lot by the end of 2020 unless they run into shortages.
Looking to grab another M.2 with 2TB or 1TB as my current 500GB gets eaten up quite fast lol
Posted on Reply
#35
Sashleycat
This was not unexpected: Comet-Lake is SKL silicon and the I/O is still gen3. However, if they could at least double the width of the DMI interface that would be nice? 24 lanes on Z390 but you can only use 1 NVME at full gen3 4x speed at a time... Also If the 10th-gen parts are priced well, they will obviously be good products. Now if Rocket Lake supports Gen4 on the CPU, and potentially the first 16x slot on these boards? It would make sense for Intel to do that IMO. This is similar in nature to the jury-rigged Gen4 capable X470 boards.

The delay is bad news for Intel, like, really bad. Lisa Su has already confirmed Zen3 this year, and this uses 7nm+ with EUV and I expect another double-digit IPC increase - even if the clock rates remain the same - the performance uplift will already be pushing it ahead of Comet Lake, even on a core to core basis.

So at the end of the day, it comes down to price now. And Intel must realise that they are no longer the premium CPU brand, and adjust their prices accordingly. But can they afford to do that? Being fabless has worked out very well for AMD, and Zen2's chiplet design makes it very economical even on a leading-edge process technology. AMD nailed not only the uArch, but the scalability and economics.

I don't think Intel can afford to wage a price-war with AMD, because they are also paying for R&D &maintaining their fabs and sunk-cost of their 10nm development and 7nm, whilst also funding 7nm... High prices are not just greed with Intel: their long-term profit margins are eaten into by the aforementioned factors, whereas AMD just buys wafers from TSMC: their R&D of said wafers and manufacturing is highly subsidised by TSMC's other clients, also.

Zen3 is rumoured to have a unified L3 cache system, each chiplet with a single monolithic (I assume) 32 MB L3 cache. Obviously, each core is not going to be able to access that entire chunk at the same low latency (unless the lookup tables are HUGE) but if these 8 cores can communicate with each other faster via the cache rather than going to the I/OD like on Zen2, further latency reductions in gaming scenarios could be made. What if Zen3 is actually more performant in the typically Intel-held bastion of ultra high-FPS gaming?

TLDR: i9-10900K for $399, $449 tops, please. Thanks Intel.
Posted on Reply
#36
Makaveli
I also believe Zen 3 will close the gaming gap with the changes they are making.

But maybe only on 8core and below models will be curious to see how the 2 CCD models will look like.
Posted on Reply
#37
ppn
Rocket lake could be upto 50% better IPC. So they have to get their product finalised by the end of 2020 and then shrink it to 7nm in 2021 and 5mm2 per core.
Posted on Reply
#38
R0H1T
We've been down this road previously, RKL will not be 50% better IPC wise wrt SKL :shadedshu:

And in the 0.1% chance it is, given Intel's naming schemes, it won't launch anytime before 2023 i.e. 7nm?
Posted on Reply
#39
repman244
birdieI have a perfectly working PC from 2011 with a Sandy Bridge CPU and I won't throw it out just because it's missing M.2 ports or PCIe4. Again you disagreed only to disagree without addressing the borked implementation from AMD and the fact that maybe Intel shouldn't release equally broken products.

Future proofing makes sense only when you know exactly how it will benefit you in the future. PCIe4 does not have anything to it aside from increased IO throughput which is necessary for all the ten people in the entire world who depend on it.

Speaking of the ports you mentioned. PCI and PCI-E have enormous advantages over ISA and AGP that's why they were more or less completely replaced and abandoned by the industry. PCIe4 over PCIe3 again brings very little if anything for 99.99% of people out there. Most people in the world don't have M.2 NVMe drives at all and couldn't care less about the performance of their disks.

If you wanted to just say AMD is great and Intel is bad - I get it. If you have some deeper insight, please let me know.
I'm also using sandy bridge...so I can remind you that PCI-E 3 on sandy bridge does not work officialy.
It was officialy supported with ivy...so like I said new technology allways has some problem at the beginning.

And just because YOU have no need for something it doesn't mean it should not exist.
I lack PCI-e slots, have all full but most people don't have that problem.
Posted on Reply
#40
Tomorrow
I believe on SB P67 chipset only supported PCIe 2.0 where as Z68 supported 3.0 too. Z77 defenetly supported 3.0 already.
Posted on Reply
#41
gamefoo21
Super XPIntel's current lot of processors are incapable of running on a PCIe4 based chipset. I mean why else would they abandon the opportunity to innovate? It's bad enough Intel CPUs run HOT and require lots of Watts. Running so high accelerates the CPUs decrease the CPUs life span No?

I'm being hard on Intel because the Intel hounds of Hell came out back when AMD released the Bulldozer design, and the company got mangled by Intel this and Intel that.

Give credit where credit is due, AMD implements PCIe4 and people love it, as there M.2 drives run as efficient as they can get.

Keeping PCIe4 away from the mobile market makes total sense, eventually a modified mobile version of the tech will become a welcomed addition.
Honestly I do want to give credit where it's due. I have an X570 system, those boards aren't cheap in the slightest.

But the fact remains that hammering on Intel for this is a little... Eh?

I can't buy a brand new 1151 board with anything but PCIe 3.0. AMD still sells B450 and X470, and their chipset lines run at 2.0...

3.0 is honestly fast enough for most people, but AMD has no bloody excuse for selling chipsets that are still PCIe 2.0. 2.0 on the other hand is slow and it's impact is appreciable.

I give props to AMD for pushing 4.0, and I rewarded them. I just think it's a little ironic that the AMD hounds are just hammering over this when B550 might still be 2.0...

Intel should have just stuck to jumping to 5.0. I really suspect the real reason is trying to fit the 5.0 controller and making it do 4.0 on 14nm, which it was never meant for is what caused these issues.

Anyways... It's really sad that Intel has had so many troubles. Complacency mixed with too much confidence has really bitten them hard.

It's great that AMD has finally managed to challenge and push Intel again. You can really tell Intel got caught flat on this all.

Though I wish AMD made it easier to fanboy for them.
Posted on Reply
#42
repman244
TomorrowI believe on SB P67 chipset only supported PCIe 2.0 where as Z68 supported 3.0 too. Z77 defenetly supported 3.0 already.
Correct, but on socket 2011 pcie 3.0 was already supported with sandy bridge, but not officially, there is a hack to enable it unless you run ivy bridge which supports it.
Posted on Reply
#43
Super XP
gamefoo21Honestly I do want to give credit where it's due. I have an X570 system, those boards aren't cheap in the slightest.

But the fact remains that hammering on Intel for this is a little... Eh?

I can't buy a brand new 1151 board with anything but PCIe 3.0. AMD still sells B450 and X470, and their chipset lines run at 2.0...

3.0 is honestly fast enough for most people, but AMD has no bloody excuse for selling chipsets that are still PCIe 2.0. 2.0 on the other hand is slow and it's impact is appreciable.

I give props to AMD for pushing 4.0, and I rewarded them. I just think it's a little ironic that the AMD hounds are just hammering over this when B550 might still be 2.0...

Intel should have just stuck to jumping to 5.0. I really suspect the real reason is trying to fit the 5.0 controller and making it do 4.0 on 14nm, which it was never meant for is what caused these issues.

Anyways... It's really sad that Intel has had so many troubles. Complacency mixed with too much confidence has really bitten them hard.

It's great that AMD has finally managed to challenge and push Intel again. You can really tell Intel got caught flat on this all.

Though I wish AMD made it easier to fanboy for them.
I think Intel deserves a little hammering lol, but I was also referring to the other poster that was hammering AMD for releasing PCIe4.0 as he makes it sound like it was a negative move.
Anyhow, look back at the Bulldozer / Piledriver CPU days, where AMD was struggling to stay afloat, they were getting hammered by Intel in every single industry segment. So due to there laziness and there incompetence or arrogance to see a real threat from AMD, Intel deserves all the hammering they can get. This back and forth is great for fair competition. Though I would prefer if both AMD and Intel both shared ea. 50% market share in desktops, notebooks and enterprise, that way each company can make each other innovate and compete on an even footing. We can dream can't we? lol
Posted on Reply
#44
Makaveli
Super XPI think Intel deserves a little hammering lol, but I was also referring to the other poster that was hammering AMD for releasing PCIe4.0 as he makes it sound like it was a negative move.
Anyhow, look back at the Bulldozer / Piledriver CPU days, where AMD was struggling to stay afloat, they were getting hammered by Intel in every single industry segment. So due to there laziness and there incompetence or arrogance to see a real threat from AMD, Intel deserves all the hammering they can get. This back and forth is great for fair competition. Though I would prefer if both AMD and Intel both shared ea. 50% market share in desktops, notebooks and enterprise, that way each company can make each other innovate and compete on an even footing. We can dream can't we? lol
Competition is good for the market the only people that don't understand that are fan boys.

They amuse me to no end. Its one thing to fan boy for a company and you own stock I get it. But most of these people will fight till the death for these companies due to some blind allegiance. They own no stock and are getting raped with high prices like everyone else.
Posted on Reply
#45
gamefoo21
Super XPI think Intel deserves a little hammering lol, but I was also referring to the other poster that was hammering AMD for releasing PCIe4.0 as he makes it sound like it was a negative move.
Anyhow, look back at the Bulldozer / Piledriver CPU days, where AMD was struggling to stay afloat, they were getting hammered by Intel in every single industry segment. So due to there laziness and there incompetence or arrogance to see a real threat from AMD, Intel deserves all the hammering they can get. This back and forth is great for fair competition. Though I would prefer if both AMD and Intel both shared ea. 50% market share in desktops, notebooks and enterprise, that way each company can make each other innovate and compete on an even footing. We can dream can't we? lol
100% Intel deserves to be hammered. AMD got lucky when they launched Zen.

PCIe 4.0 is a good thing, it's got definite perks for the server and desktop market. Saying it's no good is just silly.

We can dream definitely and I really hope we see healthy competition pushing them both.
MakaveliCompetition is good for the market the only people that don't understand that are fan boys.

They amuse me to no end. Its one thing to fan boy for a company and you own stock I get it. But most of these people will fight till the death for these companies due to some blind allegiance. They own no stock and are getting raped with high prices like everyone else.
Fanbois will fanboi. Brand loyalty doesn't benefit anyone except the brand.

It's like the fanboys who don't see a problem with nV pushing closed proprietary extensions. It's why AMD cleaned house in the console market. Microsoft had to do fancy code to get around the NV hardware. Sony dumped team green like a dirty pair of underwear.

Intel and AMD pushing open standards is good for all of us. AMD is pushing Intel into even more open and universal standards which is great.

Oh and I reserve the right to hammer AMD still. I have a 2700 sitting here that like every Zen+ has it's hardware virtualization tech disabled... That's almost unforgivable... So it's really a good time for AMD, Intel is struggling, and AMD can keep improving.

Hopefully Zen 3 will actually see AMD get ahead of Intel in per core performance across the board.
Posted on Reply
#46
Tomorrow
gamefoo21I have a 2700 sitting here that like every Zen+ has it's hardware virtualization tech disabled... That's almost unforgivable...
Care to elaborate on this? As far as i know once you enable SVM (Secure Virtual Machine) in BIOS you should have virtualization support. Unless you are talking about IOMMU because that's the motherboard makers area.
Posted on Reply
#47
95Viper
Get on topic and stay on topic.
The topic is not fanboys.

Play nice and have a civil discussion.
No insulting other members.

Thank You and Have a Good Day
Posted on Reply
#48
gamefoo21
TomorrowCare to elaborate on this? As far as i know once you enable SVM (Secure Virtual Machine) in BIOS you should have virtualization support. Unless you are talking about IOMMU because that's the motherboard makers area.
Pretty sure that AMD had to disable the hardware VT extensions because of bugs with the implementation on the CPU. If you look up specs Zen+ CPUs all lack a check box next to hardware assisted VT. Running software based VT is so slow and clunky. Zen 2 fixed this.

I just checked even the 2990WX lacks hardware VT. It's there but AMDs microcode has it disabled.
Posted on Reply
#49
Tomorrow
Ok that's news to me. I don't remember any reviews mentioning this at the time.
Posted on Reply
#50
gamefoo21
TomorrowOk that's news to me. I don't remember any reviews mentioning this at the time.
Yeah, I noticed even looking at reviews of the 2990WX there was a lack of them talking about VT in the review.

Zen+ is ironic because it supports ECC ram, but no HW-VT.

Zen 2 flips and generally doesn't support ECC ram, but has working HW-VT.
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