[GTALUG] AMD firmware update removes PCI 4.0 support on some motherboards

[xerofoify]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2019 at 12:10 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
<talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
> One of the features of the latest round of Ryzen chips is support for PCI
> 4.0.
>
> In practice, PCI 4.0 isn't very important yet: current video cards don't
> saturate PCI 3.x and neither do NVMe SSDs.  But NVMe SSDs that exploit PCI
> 4.0 are starting to be announced.
>
> There is a chicken and egg problem: until there are a lot of systems that
> can support PCI 4.0, few devices will be built to that spec.
>
> I was very disappointed to learn that AMD, in a firmware update, has
> disabled PCI 4.0 support for all consumer motherboards except those based
> on the very expensive x570 chipset.
>
> Their excuse was that some motherboards weren't built to reliably support
> PCI 4.0.  Surely they could have left that up to the discretion of the MB
> manufacturer (through whom these firmware updates flow).
>
> The motherboard must be engineered for PCI 4.0.  But it could be built
> with the cheaper X470, X370, B350, and A320 chips.  No longer.
>
> <https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/buydi6/amds_robert_hallock_no_pcie_40_support_on_300_and/epn2c83/>
>
> <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-pcie-4.0-socket-am4-motherboard,39559.html>
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Hugh,
I would agree. Most modern bus updates are to the protocol not wiring
so why not allow it. There concern
is the extra power requirements but that should be up to the
motherboard vendors to decide that. The
problem for them is I believe that some of the lower end boards for
older chipsets are able to meet requirements but not
higher end ones making some customers angry or they assume. Again this
seems to be more of a customer
relationship issue rather than a hardware issue.  PCI 4.0 is a big
deal at least for storage through the drives run
hot. https://www.pcgamer.com/dont-forget-the-heatink-for-your-crazy-fast-pcie-40-ssd/

Through PCI 4.0 is able to do 100gbps at x8 I believe so that's useful
for data centers.

Nick