Question Gen 4 m.2

[augustbernardo21]

I have an i7 9700k and a Asus maximus xi hero mobo

Will I have any issues trying to use the new gen 4 m.2 , or should I stick to gen 3?

 

[jimmysmitty]

I would assume you are talking about a PCIe 4.0 drive vs a 3.0 drive? Unless they change the connection since it uses PCIe it should in theory be backwards compatible, hell PCIe 4.0 is supposed to be backwards compatible with even 1.0.

 

[popatim]

It will downclock to gen3 speeds so make 100% sure the NVME drive has x4 lanes.

 

[USAFRet]

I have an i7 9700k and a Asus maximus xi hero mobo

Will I have any issues trying to use the new gen 4 m.2 , or should I stick to gen 3?

If the motherboard does not natively support a Gen 4, just stay with a Gen 3.

 

[mdd1963]

certainly no need to pay potentially elevated prices for a PCI-e 4.0-spec NVME drive over the prices of a good 3.0 drive if/when will be limited to PCI-e Gen 3.0/ 4x lanes bandwidth (32 Gbps) anyway (~3400 MB/sec sequential reads); but, the drives are backwards compatible with 3.0 spec M.2 boards, so, no issues other than price (well, theoretically!)

 

[popatim]

The question in my mind is Does a 5GB/s drive actually drop to 2.5GB/s just because the interface speed cut in half?

I remember reading threads with users who installed Samsung 970's in their 2.0/2.1 slots and not maxing out the pcie bus speed.

 

[jimmysmitty]

The question in my mind is Does a 5GB/s drive actually drop to 2.5GB/s just because the interface speed cut in half?

I remember reading threads with users who installed Samsung 970's in their 2.0/2.1 slots and not maxing out the pcie bus speed.

PCIe 3.0 x4, which is what most M.2 slots use, is capable of up to 3.95Gb/s theoretically. So not quite in half but it would still be slightly slower since in theory PCIe 4.0 should hit almost 8Gb/s.

 

[popatim]

Right but we don't have drives that fast yet. So someone needs to get a pcie4 drive and see how fast it actually is in a pcie3 motherboard. LoL
You'd think you'd max out the pcie3 bus .

 

[jimmysmitty]

Right but we don't have drives that fast yet. So someone needs to get a pcie4 drive and see how fast it actually is in a pcie3 motherboard. LoL
You'd think you'd max out the pcie3 bus .

Someone actually did a test with the same PCIe 4 SSD in a X570 and X470 board and the results were so close the differences in performance could be considered margin of error.

 

[popatim]

Good to know, thanks !!