No, AMD Still Isn’t Enabling PCIe 4 On 300/400 Series Boards
by Ryan Smith on July 12, 2019 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- PCIe 4.0
- Ryzen 3000
Following this week’s launch of AMD’s new Ryzen 3000 series of processors, reports have once again begun circulating that PCIe 4 will be available on some existing 300 & 400 series boards. This comes despite AMD’s official statement last month that they would not be allowing the feature on older boards, as PCIe 4’s tighter signal integrity standards would have led to, at best, a highly fragmented market where some boards work, some boards don’t, and some boards may be outright marginal. At the time the company stated that the feature would be stripped from the AGESA that goes into the final Ryzen 3000 launch BIOSes for older boards.
So, to get right to the heart of matters, I reached out to AMD PR this evening to find out what’s going on with PCIe 4 support. The short version then is that no, AMD’s plans have not changed: PCIe 4 support will be disabled in the shipping AGESA for these boards.
Our plan is unchanged. For the reliability and consistency reasons cited at Computex, we still intend to disable PCIe Gen 4 for pre-X570 motherboards. That AGESA is being released to motherboard manufacturers soon.
As things stand, any boards that currently support the feature would be using pre-release AGESAs, and as we’ve seen with our own BIOS issues, the Ryzen 3000 BIOS situation is still evolving fast. So with AMD intending to permanently disable the feature – and prevent any workarounds – AMD’s goals haven’t wavered. At best, the few boards that have beta BIOSes with the feature will lose them in the future, unless users opted to stick with an unsupported (and almost certainly buggy) BIOS.
Going forward, proper PCIe 4 support will continue to require an AMD 500-series board specifically designed to meet the signal integrity requirements for the higher speed standard. Right now, this includes boards based on AMD’s X570 chipset; and while the company hasn’t announced other 500-series chipsets, we’re expecting to see more in due time.
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hanselltc - Sunday, July 14, 2019 - link
So AMD is offering two AGESA codes, one in beta form with the PCI-E Gen4 enabled for older boards, and another stable without? I can see some reasoning behind this, but definitely not the most consumer friendly of moves.hanselltc - Sunday, July 14, 2019 - link
But well, these board partners don't exactly have an excellent track record of keeping these things crystal clear.Qasar - Sunday, July 14, 2019 - link
nor really, the one that enables PCIe4 on older boards, was beta/pre release when amd thought they could add support for older boards, the new codes, disables it on older boards.beginning - Sunday, July 14, 2019 - link
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/ryzen-3000-asus-...Korguz - Sunday, July 14, 2019 - link
i doubt that support will last, once asus gets new bios's from amd with this AGESA code removed, and bios's get updated with that code. but, can asus guarantee pcie 4 support on these boards as they claim, on ALL boards ? what happens if 2 people have the same board, and one is able to have pcie 4, and the other doesnt, then what ?Targon - Sunday, July 14, 2019 - link
How many people have complained about low end first and second generation AM4 motherboards that won't get third generation Ryzen support because the motherboard makers decided not to bother? How about the motherboards that don't have the VRMs to support Ryzen 9(3900X and 3950X), and people claiming that AMD isn't honoring the support of socket AM4 through 2020? It has been a given that some new features WILL require a X570 or B550 motherboard. There is also the problem of motherboard quality, and AMD is making sure that a feature that AMD claims to support will NOT work on 75% of the motherboards out there.Ronn91 - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
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