[SOLVED] Will Z390 PCIe3.0 Limit GeForce 3XXX?

[Regev]

My uncle is getting a 9900 (50% off from Intel) for his Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 build. He was asking me today whether he should go AMD because of the PCIe4.0 support, since he's getting one of the new GeForce 3XXX's that's coming out in two weeks. Will the Z390 PCIe3.0 boards limit the performance of the new cards in any way, or is he creating a storm in a teacup?

Thanks.

 

[sizzling]

I think it’s unlikely pcie 3.0 will cause any limitations. However this topic has popped up a fair few times and some others feel it will. Ultimately we won’t know until benchmark data testing this is released.

 

[Lutfij]

Read this;

PCIe 3.0 Vs PCIe 4.0: A Gaming Performance Comparison - Tech4Gamers

What is the real difference between PCIe 3.0 vs PCIe 4.0? Based on real tests, we have some incredible results.

tech4gamers.com

This article was done prior to Flight Sim being released so results can and will vary.

 

[mdd1963]

I'd be surprised if PCI-e 3.0 vs. 4.0 makes much of a difference...

If it does, will R7-3800X then match the 9900K or even 9700K in games given both equipped with a 3080 or 3090??

We should all know shortly!

 

[Regev]

That's why I'm asking Only reason I recommended the 9900 to him is because it gives stellar gaming performance (and he gets it for 50% off), but if the PCIe4 vs 3 difference will be higher than the 3700x vs 9900, then perhaps its better for him to get the 3700x, since it ends up a similar price anyway even considering the discount.

 

[digitalgriffin]

My uncle is getting a 9900 (50% off from Intel) for his Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 build. He was asking me today whether he should go AMD because of the PCIe4.0 support, since he's getting one of the new GeForce 3XXX's that's coming out in two weeks. Will the Z390 PCIe3.0 boards limit the performance of the new cards in any way, or is he creating a storm in a teacup?

Thanks.

For now PCIe gen 4 benefits cards with limited VRAM memory as they must go over the bus more to retrieve data from main memory. For high end cards, it seems largely a wash on modern games. That may change in the future. But there are no gaurantees.

 

[drea.drechsler]

....

This article was done prior to Flight Sim being released so results can and will vary.

Are you suggesting the Fight Sim 2020 makes better use of PCIe bandwidth? Enough to make Gen 4 stand apart more clearly from Gen 3, at any rate.

Has anybody made any tests / comparisons of this title to see?

 

[hotaru.hino]

Are you suggesting the Fight Sim 2020 makes better use of PCIe bandwidth? Enough to make Gen 4 stand apart more clearly from Gen 3, at any rate.

Has anybody made any tests / comparisons of this title to see?

I don't think PCIe bandwidth matters for Flight Simulator. At first I thought because it pulls assets from the internet would matter, but... the internet is the ultimate bottleneck. Unless somehow you have 50GB/sec speeds (pls gib), it won't matter. Yes it does do a lot of streaming of assets otherwise as any open world game would, but the game appears to do what I suspect modern open world games are doing: they load in just the bare minimum now to render and render the rest later whenever it shows up.

The only scenario where PCIe bandwidth starts to matter is if the application is truly eating up all of the card's VRAM and needs to keep swapping data in and out. But at that point, it becomes more of a question of "do you have enough VRAM?" and if you don't, either upgrade the card or lower the settings that impact it.

 

[drea.drechsler]

....
The only scenario where PCIe bandwidth starts to matter is if the application is truly eating up all of the card's VRAM and needs to keep swapping data in and out.
...

That's the scenario I imagined might be happening with FS2020 and prompted the question. It's not cheap to upgrade an 8GB GPU...but a B550m motherboard is.

And I'm aware that FS2020 is very poorly optimized at it's default settings. There are a few tweaks that can make a major difference with little to no loss of scene quality.

 

[Phaaze88]

So it's not only that it currently runs on DX 11, but also the user's ISP?
[Rocking a 15Mbps connection over on the countryside]
alk;djfa;lkjfalkald...

 

[hotaru.hino]

That's the scenario I imagined might be happening with FS2020 and prompted the question. It's not cheap to upgrade an 8GB GPU...but a B550m motherboard is.

And I'm aware that FS2020 is very poorly optimized at it's default settings. There are a few tweaks that can make a major difference with little to no loss of scene quality.

I don't think FS2020 actually uses 8GB of VRAM.

Note that anybody showing how much VRAM is being used when running is not the same thing. "Actual" VRAM usage (which I define as what the game really needs to render the frame ) is kind of hard to figure out.

So it's not only that it currently runs on DX 11, but also the user's ISP?
[Rocking a 15Mbps connection over on the countryside]
&%!

It's optional and only used for real-time weather and air traffic data, and enhancing the existing geometry and scenery.

 

[Phaaze88]

It's optional and only used for real-time weather and air traffic data, and enhancing the existing geometry and scenery.

It's not mandatory then.
Thank you.

 

[hotaru.hino]

It's not mandatory then.
Thank you.

Well, you still need your ISP to download the gigantic 100+GB of assets

 

[Phaaze88]

 

[drea.drechsler]

i've DL'd it 4 times because the install is so buggy. They've fixed some of the bugs. Even 1Gb FO ethernet doesn't help with that very much.

Also remember that all 100Gb will go in your appdata folder, not your Games folder on a Games drive (where you have Steam installed, for instance, and assumed it would follow that path like every other freakin' Steam game). That can put smaller System partitions...like my 256Gb NVME... at risk pretty quickly. So you discover that and find you really need to uninstall and re-install to get it right.

OMG...this isn't a 'what's wrong with fs2020' thread. so last i'll mention it.

 

[Phaaze88]

I see...

OMG...this isn't a 'what's wrong with fs2020' thread. so last i'll mention it.

Sorry.
It does seem to pop up rather often, even though it's been implied that the FS fanbase is rather niche.
Then there's also the fact that they launched the game in a half-butted state, and it still is currently.

Right - thread title.
Negative. It's already been tested and proven. I found it funny that some people were expecting Gen 4 to be a major turning point in games.
Gen 3 wasn't struggling, so why would Gen 4 suddenly blow it out of the water?

 

[hotaru.hino]

If you need some measure of proof that the 3080 is relatively unaffected going to PCIe 3.0

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 PCI-Express Scaling

NVIDIA Ampere finally brings PCI-Express 4.0 support to the high-end graphics market. The new interface promises twice the bandwidth of PCI-Express 3.0. We've setup an AMD Ryzen 3900XT system to test how various PCIe generations and lane widths affect gaming performance.

www.techpowerup.com

While they didn't test MSFS 2020, I still see no reason why it would be different than say Death Stranding or some other open world game.