Is PCIe4 even needed?

[whm1974]

Now that PCIe4  is now out I am wondering if it is even needed at for the foreseeable future... Yes I figure that Very High End Servers and Workstations can benefit from this, but every one else? I mean  it is my understanding that dGPUs don't even fully use PCIe3 fully. 

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

Correct. It is primarily needed for fast I/O, like file transfers.

 

However, this could change in the future, thanks to DirectStorage (eg RTX IO). This could offer some speedup when loading games and PCIe 4.0 could be an advantage.

[Lurick]

Today? Generally not.

Tomorrow? Yes, I think the 3000 series RTX cards (if I remember right) are just toeing that line of maybe needing PCIe 4.0 support to be fully utilized in certain situations by like 1% or something. What it does do though is open up doors for new technology and advancements such as DirectStore access and other things as well so while it doesn't make sense this moment it will as tech progresses and with it being adopted early we won't (hopefully) fragment ourselves when tech that can easily leverage 4.0's offerings is more widely available in a few years.

[whm1974]

6 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Correct. It is primarily needed for fast I/O, like file transfers.

 

However, this could change in the future, thanks to DirectStorage (eg RTX IO). This could offer some speedup when loading games and PCIe 4.0 could be an advantage.

It is also my understand that most Users don't need anything faster then SATA 3 for SSDs.

[Eigenvektor]

5 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

It is also my understand that most Users don't need anything faster then SATA 3 for SSDs.

The thing is that NVMe doesn't improve performance very much, e.g. when loading games, in a lot of cases. This is not the fault of the drive though.

 

The main issue is that other components of your PC suddenly become the bottleneck, so you can't profit from the full performance, right now.

 

At some point those other things will catch up and you will see more of an improvement. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but software will catch up at some point.

[whm1974]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against progress here but I'm thinking that we are not seeing the huge jumps in performance we used to have.

[Eigenvektor]

18 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against progress here but I'm thinking that we are not seeing the huge jumps in performance we used to have.

Yeah, I get it. The time where CPU speed doubled every generation is long gone. Improvements these days are much more incremental and in some cases you don't profit until other components have caught up to take advantage of them.

 

For example more cores or faster storage don't automatically translate into better performance (for the average user). A program may need to utilize multiple cores to load/decompress data to take full advantage of a faster drive. And this in turn requires the program to be multi-threaded to begin with and the developer may (not yet) be willing to invest the effort until enough users can benefit from it.

[whm1974]

6 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Yeah, I get it. The time where CPU speed doubled every generation is long gone. Improvements these days are much more incremental and in some cases you don't profit until other components have caught up to take advantage of them.

 

For example more cores or faster storage don't automatically translate into better performance (for the average user). A program may need to utilize multiple cores to load/decompress data to take full advantage of a faster drive. And this in turn requires the program to be multi-threaded to begin with and the developer may (not yet) be willing to invest the effort until enough users can benefit from it.

Well even GPUs haven't gotten huge improvements like they used to. Now such things are much lower power consumption are well welcomed from me due to lees heat produced, but.

[PeachGr]

ATM there are new GPUs and an NVMe from samsung that use pcie 4.0, but PVs are so complecated that you need a variety of parts to notice a difference. For example games still use less than 4 cores, so you chould say that more than that is useless (if you only game)
But there are some users, as you mentioned servers, or editors that even 5% difference translates to money and time

[manikyath]

if directly loading game assets from NVME to GPU, getting PCIe 4.0 speeds will be a HUGE boost compared to PCIe 3.0 speeds.

 

the question is: when will that become widespread, how widespread will it become, and will the implementation be actually noticeable.

[AlwaysWong]

For storage performance yeah. For gpu performance, not really.

[whm1974]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if directly loading game assets from NVME to GPU, getting PCIe 4.0 speeds will be a HUGE boost compared to PCIe 3.0 speeds.

 

the question is: when will that become widespread, how widespread will it become, and will the implementation be actually noticeable.

I'm going to assume here that Gamer will need 4K textures or something to really benefit from this Tech. AFAIK most Gamers only have 1080p Displays. Myself I have a 2560p but... I'm Niche anyway.

[manikyath]

Just now, whm1974 said:

I'm going to assume here that Gamer will need 4K textures or something to really benefit from this Tech. AFAIK most Gamers only have 1080p Displays. Myself I have a 2560p but... I'm Niche anyway.

well.. today <=> what we'll be using 5 years from now.

 

also, there's more to directly loading assets than texture resolution. if the GPU can load assets (more) directly, it'll take a lot of strain off the CPU, allowing game devs to introduce more features that tax the CPU (for example, more on-screen AI, etc.)

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, whm1974 said:

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against progress here but I'm thinking that we are not seeing the huge jumps in performance we used to have.

of course not we're approaching what can be done with current conventional tech fast...

 

I'd even say we theoretically reached that point already but companies like Nvidia etc, understandably, postpone this as much as possible because they know at some point they have no improvements to offer anymore whatsoever... Moore's Law is indeed DEAD

[whm1974]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

of course not we're approaching what can be done with current conventional tech fast...

 

I'd even say we theoretically reached that point already but companies like Nvidia etc, understandably, postpone this as much as possible because they know at some point they have no improvements to offer anymore whatsoever... Moore's Law is indeed DEAD

Well I don't about dead but I'm sure that lower power consumption and less heat output can and will see major improvements over time.

[dilpickle]

Wait till you find out about PCI-E 5.0 and PCI-E 6.0

[Helpful Tech Witch]

2 hours ago, PeachGr said:

NVMe from samsung

not just samsung tho..... IK sabrent has them, and i think Corsair has some.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Moore's Law is indeed DEAD

isnt moores law just that the number of transistors doubles, not the speed.

[dizmo]

Depends how long you consider foreseeable.

Right now, no, you won't really see an improvement. I imagine it'll be a few years at least before you see it being useful in terms of gaming, but now that consoles have the ability to load from NVME storage, you can bet that a few developers will probably use that as well. Question remains to be seen, how widespread it gets. In say 4 years, I'd say PCIe 4.0 will be more relevant.

 

2 hours ago, whm1974 said:

I'm going to assume here that Gamer will need 4K textures or something to really benefit from this Tech. AFAIK most Gamers only have 1080p Displays. Myself I have a 2560p but... I'm Niche anyway.

2560p isn't a thing..

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

of course not we're approaching what can be done with current conventional tech fast...

 

I'd even say we theoretically reached that point already but companies like Nvidia etc, understandably, postpone this as much as possible because they know at some point they have no improvements to offer anymore whatsoever... Moore's Law is indeed DEAD

Mmmm. No. No it's not.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2019/08/14/tsmcs-cheng-says-moores-law-isnt-dead-and-teases-its-n5p-node/#9fd07c1c025d

https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/21/moores_law_ai/

[Bad5ector]

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

if directly loading game assets from NVME to GPU, getting PCIe 4.0 speeds will be a HUGE boost compared to PCIe 3.0 speeds.

I assume you mean something akin to what the PS5 SSD is supposed to be doing? 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

2560p isn't a thing..

 

no, I think he has this

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-elitebook-2560p-notebook-pc/5071201/document/c02852909

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, Bad5ector said:

I assume you mean something akin to what the PS5 SSD is supposed to be doing? 

the 3000 gpus have it, and i guess you could infer that the RDNA2 gpus have it.

[whm1974]

3 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Depends how long you consider foreseeable.

Right now, no, you won't really see an improvement. I imagine it'll be a few years at least before you see it being useful in terms of gaming, but now that consoles have the ability to load from NVME storage, you can bet that a few developers will probably use that as well. Question remains to be seen, how widespread it gets. In say 4 years, I'd say PCIe 4.0 will be more relevant.

 

2560p isn't a thing..

Mmmm. No. No it's not.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2019/08/14/tsmcs-cheng-says-moores-law-isnt-dead-and-teases-its-n5p-node/#9fd07c1c025d

https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/21/moores_law_ai/

Pardon me it's 2560x1600p... Are the next generation consoles out it? I'm a PC Gamer so I don't keep track of game consoles...

[dizmo]

2 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

 

no, I think he has this

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-elitebook-2560p-notebook-pc/5071201/document/c02852909

And I thought gaming on my 4th gen Intel was weak

[dizmo]

1 minute ago, whm1974 said:

Pardon me it's 2560x1600p... Are the next generation consoles out it? I'm a PC Gamer so I don't keep track of game consoles...

Haha, how's life under the rock you've picked??

Jokes aside, it's rather shocking you haven't seen any of the hundreds if not thousands of news articles and videos about them.

They're out next month. I think you can preorder them now.