PCIe Gen 4 Musings
Having a Ryzen 7 3rd Gen platform at hand has allowed us an opportunity to take a quick look at gaming performance via PCIe 4.0. Using an Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero X570 motherboard in conjunction with the new 3DMark PCI Express Feature Test, we can confirm that system-to-GPU bandwidth is increased by 77 per cent, climbing from 14GB/s to 24.8GB/s.
The potential is clear to see, but are today's games going to be able to take advantage? The synthetic 3DMark Time Spy suggests not by returning an inconsequential performance gain of 0.5 per cent.
We experience similar gains in Forza Horizon 4 at all three resolutions. Gaming via the newer, higher-bandwidth interface is repeatedly a fraction faster, but it is only a fraction.
The same holds true for World of Tanks. Gaming via PCIe 4.0 is one for the future, but be sure to explore our Ryzen 3rd Gen review for a more thorough analysis of what the latest PCIe standard has to offer in terms of storage and overall system performance. In terms of graphics, and specifically gaming, it is interesting to note that the new Radeons favour PCIe 4.0, while the latest GeForce cards side with hardware-accelerated ray tracing. We wonder which will prove most beneficial in the long run?