Honest question coming from a point of consumer-thinking ignorance: With GPU makers putting out x8 cards on PCIe 4.0 and the heat issues with PCIe 5.0 SSDs, what practical nonenterprise uses are these speeds going to have?
Honest question coming from a point of consumer-thinking ignorance: With GPU makers putting out x8 cards on PCIe 4.0 and the heat issues with PCIe 5.0 SSDs, what practical nonenterprise uses are these speeds going to have?
For a single device there’s really no benefit right now, but there is a huge benefit for aggregate bandwidth. Your typical consumer motherboard/CPU doesn’t actually have a ton of lanes, most lanes are provided by the PCH, meaning you’re actually sharing bandwidth for a lot of devices. Typically only one x16 slot (for GPU) and an NVME slot are connected directly to the CPU. With PCIe-6.0 and beyond you can break those lanes into more lower speed lanes and not have to share bandwidth.
I was thinking about how ~24 lanes would start feeling a lot more generous, but I also feel like narrowing lanes per slot would mean faster obsolescence. Let’s say I get a PCIe 5.0 x4 SSD in two years that survives long enough for 6.0 to be mainstream on a new board … but x2 is now standard for SSDs to share the lanes better overall. Isn’t that now effectively a 5.0 x2 drive?