990fx does support pcie 3.0

[The Alias]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/ces_2013_look_ma_amds_990fx_does_have_pcie_30_support_video
my question is why did they hold back all this time

 

[AtenRa]

I believe this is with a PLX chip

 

[Soulkeeper]

interesting
Would be nice to see a review of that board.

If it is using a PLX chip or similar, to say translate 16 pcie 3.0 lanes into 32 pcie 2.0 lanes, there could be an element of latency added possibly negating the benefit.
Techpowerup says it is a 48 lane PLX chip

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not really sure what this gives you. There's still only a fixed amount of bandwidth available from the chipset. Whether this bandwidth is expressed using PCI-E 2.0 x16, or PCI-E 3.0 x8, really shouldn't matter.

 

[SPBHM]

I'm not really sure what this gives you. There's still only a fixed amount of bandwidth available from the chipset. Whether this bandwidth is expressed using PCI-E 2.0 x16, or PCI-E 3.0 x8, really shouldn't matter.

it can make a huge difference if you are using a PCIE 3.0 1x, or 4x device compared to 2.0 1x, 4x or something,
but for VGAs at 16x, with the added latency and potentially other bottlenecks?

it's probably not very useful

 

[Elixer]

Nice pic showing what is going on

Ripped from http://forums.techpowerup.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=2819367

 

[ViRGE]

So if I'm understanding this right, they're generating a single PCIe 3.0 x16 connection by merging 2 PCIe 2.0 x16 connections? I'd call it weird, but that's probably too weak of a word.

 

[Idontcare]

So if I'm understanding this right, they're generating a single PCIe 3.0 x16 connection by merging 2 PCIe 2.0 x16 connections? I'd call it weird, but that's probably too weak of a word.

Would it be correct to refer to this as "ganging" or "bonding" then? Like dual-channel memory controllers, or when you gang together two network adaptors and bond them to double their throughput?

It is an interesting approach.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

So if I'm understanding this right, they're generating a single PCIe 3.0 x16 connection by merging 2 PCIe 2.0 x16 connections? I'd call it weird, but that's probably too weak of a word.

Weird is indeed to weak a word. Just think about it for a moment. The PCIe connection to the PLX chip is essentially limited to a "x32" PCIe 2.0 link. That's 16GB/s both ways, the equivalent of a single PCIe 3.0 x16 link. Now you'll have to share that bandwidth out to 3x PCIe 3.0 x16... 😵

The only use I could see for this is if you for some reason need the bandwidth for a SINGLE PCIe 3.0 card... but that kind of defeats the purpose in the first place...

I hope that makes sense... 🙂