[SOLVED] PCIE 4.0 needed for the RTX 3080Ti?

[Cabralkev]

Hey everyone,

So before I ask my question, here's my rig:

i9 9900k
MSI Z390 ACE
32 gbs
RTX 2080

So my question is, I'm wanting to upgrade to the RTX 3080Ti whenever it comes out. Problem is, Intel hasn't released a PCIE 4.0 interface. The frustrating part is, I bought this MSI board back in October, it's not old at all. It's a little disappointing knowing I might have to replace my board 🙁. Is it something all Intel owners need to do and get a board with PCIE 4.0 or PCIE 5.0 whenever that comes out? Just to get a new video card?

Thanks in advance

 

[Darkbreeze]

You don't need to replace your board because that graphics card, when it comes, will work perfectly fine in a PCI 3.0 slot. In fact, you would not be able to tell any difference, based on THIS GEN RTX cards, anyhow. Much like we still don't much even exceed the bus capabilities of PCIe 2.0 for the most part.

Conclusion
Our testing has pretty clearly shown that for gaming using either PCI-E 2.0 or PCI-E 3.0 will give you nearly identical performance. Oddly, in some benchmarks PCI-E 2.0 was actually faster than PCI-E 3.0. At the same time, x16 was not consistantly faster than x8. Again, x8 was actually faster than x16 in many cases. So unless you care about getting up to 1.5 FPS better performance, you might actually want to manually set your video cards to operate at x8 speeds - although we really would not recommend doing so.
This isn't to say that PCI-E 3.0 is not faster than PCI-E 2.0, or that x16 is the same as x8, but rather that current video cards and games are simply not able to utilize the additional bandwidth they provide. In fact, we recently showed that the performance of a Xeon Phi card is greatly reduced if you run it at x8 speeds in the blog post Performance of Xeon Phi on PCIe x8.
While we recommend using the latest PCI-E revision whenever possible, if your motherboard or video card only supports PCI-E 2.0 our results show that this really is not a problem. At the same time, if you want to install a sound card into your Z87 system but doing so would limit your video card to x8 speeds, that is also not a very big problem. At most you may see ~1.5 FPS drop in performance, but that change is so small that it is very unlikely to ever be noticeable.

Impact of PCI-E Speed on Gaming Performance

Many hardware sites have shown in the past that video cards do not show any performance decrease by running in x8 mode and cannot utilize the larger bandwidth provided by the latest Gen3 specification. However, video cards are getting faster and faster so we felt it this is still true. Also...

www.pugetsystems.com

Then if you upgrade your platform later, THEN you can worry about making sure that you go with something that is PCI 4.0 but in all honestly I don't see it really offering a lot of advantage for a while. Much as very high speed memory doesn't really do a lot either past a certain point.

 

[Cabralkev]

Good to know then I was worried I had to swap out the board just for me to use the next RTX cards and benefit from their performance. I'm hoping my i9 9900k can last lol 😛 because if I need to swap the board... I can still use my i9 9900k and lower the cost lol

 

[Darkbreeze]

There is no board you can swap to, now or in the future, that would allow you to use the 9900k AND upgrade to PCIe 4.0 support because from what I've read the 10th gen Intel CPUs and chipsets are still not going to support it anyhow PLUS they won't be compatible with 9th Gen CPUs anyhow. So what you have, is what you have.

I would not worry about it, at all.

 

[Cabralkev]

As long as I don't need to switch my cpu or mobo to benefit from the new RTX 3080 line up... Then I'm happy. I'd like the RTX 3080 Ti without the worry of losing performance due to not using PCIE 4.0.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The 3080 TI will absolutely benefit you with or without PCIe 4.0. There is no question of that.

The only thing that is really in question is whether you have a power supply that is adequate for the job and up to the task. So what is the exact model of your power supply?

 

[Cabralkev]

Once nvidia releases the RTX 3080 Ti card... I'll buy it then . I'm buying it to replace my RTX 2080. The PSU I got is Corsair 1000w

 

[Darkbreeze]

Should be fine then. How old, or rather, how long in service is that 1000w Corsair PSU? How many years?

 

[Cabralkev]

It's only a few months old

 

[Cabralkev]

I got the PSU in August of last year. Can't remember when I built my rig if it was in March of last year or May. Either way, my rig isn't old

 

[Darkbreeze]

I fixed your post. It said "August of last month". I laughed. LOL.

I agree, that's not old and that PSU should be fine.

 

[Cabralkev]

Lmao oh damn! I didn't catch that haha. Thanks! Hopefully I don't need to replace my i9 9900k anytime soon. The cpu is a beast so far lol. My rtx 2080 however... I should of gotten the rtx 2080Ti but didn't have the money at the time lol. I also have the G.Skill 32 3200

 

[Darkbreeze]

I'd say your CPU should be good for four or five years, at least.

 

[Cabralkev]

I wonder when PCIE 5.0 gets releases if the cpu socket will also support LGA1151. So I can still keep my i9 9900k but swap the motherboard 👍

 

[Darkbreeze]

No, as I said, what you have now, that's it. There are not going to be ANY motherboards you can install your CPU in from this point forward. Current gen motherboards are the ONLY motherboards that will EVER be compatible with that CPU.

The new 10000 series Intel processors will require new motherboards. They are going to be LGA 1200 sockets, but even if they weren't, they still wouldn't be compatible just like the 6th and 7th gen LGA 1151 motherboards are not compatible with 8th and 9th Gen LGA 1151 processors.

If you want to upgrade to a newer motherboard at some point, to take advantage of newer features, you WILL have to replace your processor. But honestly I see very little reason why you should HAVE to do that. Consider, there are people still using their 2nd and 3rd Gen Intel i7's with current gen graphics cards from top to bottom. Sure, they lack some of the punch of latest gen processors, but the fact is, they still WORK with latest gen graphics cards so there is no reason that in five years you can't still be using that 9900k with your current motherboard, if it lasts that long, unless you see some feature on newer boards that is compelling enough to want to upgrade the whole platform again.

 

[Cabralkev]

Thanks for making it clear for me you've been very helpful and I'm thankful. You know what it is... I'm probably paranoid worries about the next RTX video card line up not working to its fullest with my setup. Good to know there are other people using old Gen CPUs with current video cards and it works well.

 

[Darkbreeze]

"Working to it's fullest" is deceptively misleading and also somewhat subjective.

Having a high quality power supply, motherboard, memory and graphics card are probably the MORE important things to worry about, rather than worrying about having the "latest" versions.

Having high quality parts can definitely override the idea that you have to have the latest technology because having PCIe 5.0 on a bottom end, crappy quality motherboard is likely a lot less desirable, especially for graphics cards that are unlikely to even BE capable of taking advantage of PCIe 5.0 for many years to come, than having a very high quality PCIe 3.0 capable motherboard.

Like I said, we don't even saturate the PCIe 3.0 bus in most cases as it is now, much less saturating the PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 busses.

Just get the parts you need, buy the best quality for each part that you can afford and then stop worrying. Sit back, game, relax, do your thing, and worry about your performance once it begins to lag below what it ought to be getting at some point down the road, IF that even happens before something dies from age at some point. You are a lot more likely to be forced to upgrade because of a hardware failure happening than you are because your performance has fallen off. Within a five year period anyhow.