Question pci-e lanes on z590

[PingSpike]

Anyone more familiar with Intel boards than me understand the chipset/cpu lane setup on the new rocketlake cpus and boards.

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What is the story with pcie lanes on these new boards? Its a very odd chance to have while keeping the socket.

From the sounds of it cometlake was the same old story 16+4dmi. And that has the same socket as this board. The anandtech article makes it look like Intel has now added 8 additional lanes. 4 of the lanes are used in the DMI link, which runs at 3.0 speeds and brings it to 8x. This is effectively on par with AMDs 4x pcie 4.0 link. And they also added 4 4.0 lanes used for the first m.2 slot, same as AMD. So they're about par with AMD chipsets, I guess technically since the chipset is all 3.0 but linked with twice the lanes they're somewhere between x570 and b550.

So does this mean there were a bunch of pins for the m.2 slot and +4x dmi lanes that just weren't used on the socket for cometlake? I know you're not getting 4.0 out of anything if you install a cometlake in this board...but would you still get 8x dmi link and the 4x 3.0 m.2 direct to cpu?

 

[Topweasel]

Anyone more familiar with Intel boards than me understand the chipset/cpu lane setup on the new rocketlake cpus and boards.

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What is the story with pcie lanes on these new boards? Its a very odd chance to have while keeping the socket.

From the sounds of it cometlake was the same old story 16+4dmi. And that has the same socket as this board. The anandtech article makes it look like Intel has now added 8 additional lanes. 4 of the lanes are used in the DMI link, which runs at 3.0 speeds and brings it to 8x. This is effectively on par with AMDs 4x pcie 4.0 link. And they also added 4 4.0 lanes used for the first m.2 slot, same as AMD. So they're about par with AMD chipsets, I guess technically since the chipset is all 3.0 but linked with twice the lanes they're somewhere between x570 and b550.

So does this mean there were a bunch of pins for the m.2 slot and +4x dmi lanes that just weren't used on the socket for cometlake? I know you're not getting 4.0 out of anything if you install a cometlake in this board...but would you still get 8x dmi link and the 4x 3.0 m.2 direct to cpu?

To your last questions. No I would assume not. I think there is a crazy risk that A.) The first m.2 will not work. B.) that you get 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes to the chipset. They probably don't have to turn off any features because of it but it would basically be a Z490 in that aspect.

Also I thought AMD increased the lanes to the Chipset on top of PCIe 4. Or was that just on TR. NVM check nope still 4 just at 4.0. So parity. So yeah parity there, instead of jumping ahead they targeted direct parity. If its right 20 PCIe 4 and a 8x DMI link at PCIe 3.0 levels the effective bandwidth support is exactly the same. Which also implies that the chipset is basically exactly the same they just upped the channels. Which is why it is only 8x. Chances are they are switching them from 4x 4.0 to 8x 3.0 at the CPU so the chipset gets it as 8x 3.0 connections instead of down connecting them from 4x 4.0 into 4x 3.0

 

[blckgrffn]

If you kept up on Z490, there are *lot* of those boards that have an "DO NOT USE THIS YET!!!" labeled PCIe 4 M.2 slot that is reserved for use with RKL CPUs and I would guess new board firmware.

It will be interesting to see how many boards are updated to make it work.

Which means that Z590 is really about doubling the link to the chipset as near as I could tell. There doesn't seem to be much steam about it being 12th Gen capable? If there isn't another generation of CPU support it seems to be an even weak chipset refresh IMO.

If putting a CML CPU in a z590 board yields a dead M2 port I guess that's just the same as how it is on z490.

 

[PingSpike]

If you kept up on Z490, there are *lot* of those boards that have an "DO NOT USE THIS YET!!!" labeled PCIe 4 M.2 slot that is reserved for use with RKL CPUs and I would guess new board firmware.

Ah, interesting! That must be confusing for a lot of people, including myself. You're right, all it really offers is the 8x 3.0 chipset link then.

As far as 12th gen, Intel generally doesn't do more than two CPU generations per socket so I expect they will throw the whole thing away and start over for 12th gen. They could change, but the fact the kept doing it during all the skylake++ generations doesn't give me much hope there.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Ah, interesting! That must be confusing for a lot of people, including myself. You're right, all it really offers is the 8x 3.0 chipset link then.

As far as 12th gen, Intel generally doesn't do more than two CPU generations per socket so I expect they will throw the whole thing away and start over for 12th gen. They could change, but the fact the kept doing it during all the skylake++ generations doesn't give me much hope there.

They are. Alder lake is 10nm, new socket, and ddr5. Scheduled for late 2021. Not sure why anyone would buy rocketlake unless they simply have to because we should see some real performance improvements with AL

 

[blckgrffn]

They are. Alder lake is 10nm, new socket, and ddr5. Scheduled for late 2021. Not sure why anyone would buy rocketlake unless they simply have to because we should see some real performance improvements with AL

As much as I would like to believe that, it seems far fetched to me that we'd actually get all that in 2021. Here's to hoping!

I just don't see what the point there was to Z590. Rocketlake I understand, even if I think it should have happened when Comet Lake was launched instead of now.

 

[Furious_Styles]

As much as I would like to believe that, it seems far fetched to me that we'd actually get all that in 2021. Here's to hoping!

I just don't see what the point there was to Z590. Rocketlake I understand, even if I think it should have happened when Comet Lake was launched instead of now.

I think it's just so they have a competitive product with x570. Whenever people are asking about building new systems I have a hard time recommending intel when they don't have PCI-e 4.0. I know it's not really important now but in a year or two it will probably be a feature you will want to have.

 

[blckgrffn]

I think it's just so they have a competitive product with x570. Whenever people are asking about building new systems I have a hard time recommending intel when they don't have PCI-e 4.0. I know it's not really important now but in a year or two it will probably be a feature you will want to have.

Ah yeah, I guess, for like 8 months you can pair your non-existent new PCIe 4 GPU with your shiny, new Intel platform. Meh.

Z490 has PCIe 4 storage available, which to me is the more important place to have it if you aren't doing shared memory pools (SAM, right?) with a CPU.

But I see your point. Marketing bullet points, so many Intel (2nd gen chipset of a given socket flavor) chipset launches seem to be like that.