[SOLVED] I have a few questions about the asus b550-f motherboard

[lordtristan28]

Hello!

I'm looking to upgrade to Ryzen soon, i really like the look and feature set of the b550-f but a friend of mine is recommending the i pick up the x70 series chipset for the extra pcie 4 lanes, i don't have a pcie 4 graphics card right now, but if i did would i be able to run my graphics card at pcie 4 16x and a nvme drive at pcie 4 4x?

I would be pairing it with a ryzen 3600xt.

Is there really any point in me using the extra money to get a x70 board? I'll be happy if i can get a pcie 4 16x graphics card and a pcie 4 4x nvme in there with no problems.

Thanks!

 

[Darkbreeze]

PCIe 4.0, literally, makes no difference in performance right now. Not even with the latest Nvidia 30 series graphics cards or Gen4 storage devices. Not in real world usage. I'd focus on other features you require onboard and not worry about that aspect at all. PCIe 3.0 is still not fully saturated 99.9% of the time by cards or NVME drives.

PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 GPU Benchmark

With the launch of the new GeForce 30 series, PCI Express 4.0 performance has come up into the discussion. To find out exactly what we're talking about,...

www.techspot.com

PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 SSDs Benchmarked

High performance storage is in transition as the industry is beginning to adopt the PCIe 4.0 standard. In this roundup, we'll be taking a look at the...

www.techspot.com

If you have a PCIe Gen4 NVME drive, it's possible to get a slight increase in performance, but you have to also have a PCIe 4.0 compliant board and CPU (Obviously) and, the workload has to be such that all the stars align just right. As mentioned in that article, the PCIe 3.0 Samsung 970 actually was FASTER in game launches than the compared Gen4 drives. So, regardless, there's not enough there, yet, to worry about.

As far as lanes, B550 has plenty of PCIe 4.0 lanes. Seems to be the same configuration as X570 so I doubt there's really any benefit there from one to the other. Fully explained in these two articles.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-9-3950x-review,4.html

B550 motherboard guide: ASUS and AMD bring PCI Express 4.0 to everyone with ROG Strix, TUF Gaming, and Prime - Edge Up

AMD's B550 platform brings PCI Express 4.0 connectivity to the mainstream. We're ready to help you find the right board in our ASUS B550 motherboard guide.

edgeup.asus.com

 

[BogdanH]

In short:
B550
-1st GPU slot and 1st M.2 slot are PCIe 4.0
-2nd GPU slot and 2nd M.2 slot are PCIe 3.0
X570
-1st GPU slot and 1st M.2 slot are PCIe 4.0
-2nd GPU slot is PCIe 4.0
-2nd M.2 slot is (usually) PCIe 4.0 (depends on motherboard)

 

[drea.drechsler]

....
Is there really any point in me using the extra money to get a x70 board?
..

Only if you have a definite use for the extra PCIe gen 4 lanes one makes available. OR...need one of the extreme high-end boards that have a huge feature set for overclocking with LN2, e.g. Crosshair VIII Dark Hero.

Otherwise, B550 does everything you could ever need...including providing for SAM (with a 5000 CPU and a 6000 GPU) and PCIe gen 4 to both of 1 ea. GPU and 1 ea. NVME.

 

[BogdanH]

Agree with drea.drechsler (above).