Oh here we go again![]()
Well, it is needed. The new Pascal cards run out of bandwidth from what I read. That is; if you don't run them on PCIe 3.0 x16.
Just another reason for Intel to change sockets.
Really.. This is clearly progress, were getting faster and it is "going" to be needed.
We also need to remember that storage is moving over to PCIe. In a few years NVMe may be the norm, we will need the extra bandwidth.
It also means that PCIe 4 CPUs and motherboards will be much more capable of SLI and CF. Remember that an x8 PCIe 4 lane is a X16 PCIe 3 lane.
Even enthusiasts are not on all PCIE storage dude. It's far too expensive for the boosts it gives a regular desktop user. Don't get me wrong, my RAIDR is much faster than a Sandisk (I can feel it, especially loading up things like Photoshop) but that doesn't mean I would switch to all PCIE storage as it costs far too much.
Now in server land? yeah, check out AMD's Zen board with loads of PCIE slots. It's just another server hand me down dude, with the usual "Move along, nothing to see here" sign hanging from it.
PCI-E slots should never be used to connect SSDs, that is just lazy and inefficient of intel.
Intel and the SSD manufacturers need to come up with a system that works like sata but much faster, using a very small connector into the motherboard.
Doing the above would mean new CPUs, motherboards and SSDs. This should not be difficult for intel as they release new boards/CPUs every 5 minutes anyway.
There is no reason why intel can not come up with a standard for SSDs that is many times faster than anything we have today.
In 2025.
If we've not even maxed out PCIE3 yet with four Pascal Titan X then pray tell how PCIE4 is needed?
PCIE3 was released years too early also. It was only done because other than onboard USB3 and SATA 3 Intel's X79 platform offered nothing over X58. In fact, some X58 boards came with both.
My bet is we will see these PCIE4 boards come on new sockets for CPUs that are about 5-10% faster than what we have now, and the PCIE part will be the main selling strategy.
Obviously they're not going to move forward on DDR4 so this will give them the perfect sales pitch.
Even enthusiasts are not on all PCIE storage dude. It's far too expensive for the boosts it gives a regular desktop user. Don't get me wrong, my RAIDR is much faster than a Sandisk (I can feel it, especially loading up things like Photoshop) but that doesn't mean I would switch to all PCIE storage as it costs far too much.
Now in server land? yeah, check out AMD's Zen board with loads of PCIE slots. It's just another server hand me down dude, with the usual "Move along, nothing to see here" sign hanging from it.