{"video_id":"vZ_2kRO-RPg","title":"Maybe upgrading is pointless….. - PCI-E Gen 4 vs Gen 3","channel":"Linus Tech Tips","show":"Linus Tech Tips","published_at":"2021-05-05T14:53:29Z","duration_s":691,"segments":[{"start_s":0.24,"end_s":5.68,"text":"surely a shiny new pci express gen 4","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":3.6,"end_s":9.36,"text":"system is going to absolutely blow the doors off your old gen 3 one right","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":8.559,"end_s":13.92,"text":"well yes but maybe not for the reason that you would","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":12.96,"end_s":19.92,"text":"think MSI sponsored this video where we are going to be digging deep into the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":17.359,"end_s":24.0,"text":"performance impact of turbo charging your pci express speed","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":22.08,"end_s":28.16,"text":"why did they sponsor that when their marketing so prominently features pci","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":26.32,"end_s":34.16,"text":"express gen 4 you might ask cause MSI don't give a what PCIe","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":30.4,"end_s":36.719,"text":"gen you buy as long as it's MSI so lol","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":34.16,"end_s":36.719,"text":"here we go","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":43.44,"end_s":48.32,"text":"if you've never heard of our Techquickie channel and you're wondering what the sun","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":51.44,"end_s":56.64,"text":"i think this backplate actually took the brunt of it oh nice if you've never","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":55.44,"end_s":63.44,"text":"heard of our Techquickie channel and you're wondering what the sam hill of pci express is the tldr is it's the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":61.28,"end_s":68.56,"text":"method that modern cpus use to communicate with virtually everything","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":65.84,"end_s":73.92,"text":"else in your pc and the total bandwidth available to it for high speed graphics","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":71.36,"end_s":78.24,"text":"or storage or networking is determined by two things","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":75.36,"end_s":82.56,"text":"the number of lanes the CPU can allocate to a device and the speed at which those","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":81.04,"end_s":85.52,"text":"lanes can operate think of pci express kind of like a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":84.56,"end_s":89.68,"text":"highway adding more lanes is challenging because","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":87.759,"end_s":95.36,"text":"it requires more interconnects which makes the components larger and more","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":91.759,"end_s":97.52,"text":"complex adding cost by contrast if you","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":95.36,"end_s":101.52,"text":"could just make all the cars drive faster that's way more economical","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":100.4,"end_s":106.24,"text":"as long as you can keep them from crashing so engineers at pci sig and its","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":104.24,"end_s":111.439,"text":"members have been working hard to improve data integrity allowing these","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":108.479,"end_s":116.72,"text":"pci express links or lanes to reach higher and higher clock speeds each","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":114.399,"end_s":121.52,"text":"generation since the first has roughly doubled the speed of each individual","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":118.88,"end_s":127.92,"text":"lane with pci express gen 4 offering nearly 2 gigabytes per second per lane","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":125.84,"end_s":134.959,"text":"that means that our featured card here an MSI GeForce rtx 3090 supreme x can be","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":131.44,"end_s":136.72,"text":"fed at nearly 32 gigabytes per second on","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":134.959,"end_s":141.12,"text":"a compliant motherboard and good thing right because it not only","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":138.959,"end_s":145.84,"text":"boasts the most powerful GPU on the market it's factory overclocked to boot","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":144.0,"end_s":151.12,"text":"so armed with only the information you have so far you'd probably think that","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":148.4,"end_s":156.0,"text":"pci express gen 4 is an absolute necessity for gamers and power users","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":153.519,"end_s":162.08,"text":"everywhere but a theory is just that a theory we need to put it to the test so","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":158.72,"end_s":165.28,"text":"we'll be using a ryzen 9 5950x and a top","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":162.08,"end_s":167.04,"text":"of the line MSI x570 godlike motherboard","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":165.28,"end_s":171.76,"text":"to remove as many other system bottlenecks as possible we're also going","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":168.959,"end_s":176.56,"text":"to throw an rx 6900xt into the mix for team red representation starting with","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":173.68,"end_s":180.879,"text":"NVIDIA our rtx 3090 pulls roughly the same numbers in shadow of the tomb","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":177.92,"end_s":185.599,"text":"raider with a slight dip in gen 3's 95th percentile minimums what that means is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":183.44,"end_s":189.84,"text":"that the experience is generally the same except that when the game hitches","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":187.68,"end_s":193.76,"text":"or stutters it's a little bit more severe on gen 3 though","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":192.159,"end_s":199.519,"text":"we couldn't detect it with the human eye in this case in fact the difference wasn't much","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":196.959,"end_s":204.48,"text":"beyond our margin of error in any of the tests that we ran including","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":201.28,"end_s":206.959,"text":"forza horizon 4 f1 2020 and red dead","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":204.48,"end_s":211.36,"text":"redemption 2 where gen 3 frame rates are consistently a frame or two behind gen 4","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":209.519,"end_s":214.799,"text":"but no more where the pattern doesn't hold is in cs","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":213.84,"end_s":220.799,"text":"go check out that 60 FPS minimum frame rate","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":217.36,"end_s":222.799,"text":"drop and 50 FPS average loss for","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":220.799,"end_s":228.0,"text":"whatever reason this game seems to absolutely hammer the pci express bus","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":225.76,"end_s":232.159,"text":"compared to other newer titles that we tested so the faster these transfers can","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":230.319,"end_s":236.48,"text":"happen the better on AMD the story is much the same shadow","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":234.799,"end_s":241.599,"text":"of the tomb raider doesn't see any variation and we're only a frame off in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":238.72,"end_s":246.4,"text":"forza horizon 4. f1 2020 and red dead redemption 2 also show only a modest","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":244.0,"end_s":250.56,"text":"difference on gen 4 versus gen 3 but then again","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":247.68,"end_s":257.519,"text":"look at those cs go scores we've gone from over 400 FPS average with gen 4 to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":253.68,"end_s":260.479,"text":"just 311 in gen 3. that's a difference","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":257.519,"end_s":265.759,"text":"of almost 30 percent from these results then it's clear that these kinds of","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":262.479,"end_s":268.4,"text":"gains are rare but they are out there if","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":265.759,"end_s":272.8,"text":"you're running the right applications also we expect this speed to become more","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":271.04,"end_s":276.08,"text":"important as direct storage makes its way into pc games","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":274.4,"end_s":280.32,"text":"if you haven't heard of direct storage it is functionally similar to the way","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":277.919,"end_s":285.04,"text":"that the playstation 5 and the xbox series is allow the graphics chip to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":282.8,"end_s":289.68,"text":"bypass other system bottlenecks and directly access your game storage drive","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":287.36,"end_s":294.24,"text":"for faster loading times and sony says with their implementation even real-time","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":291.84,"end_s":299.36,"text":"asset streaming that's still a ways off on the pc though so in the meantime is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":297.12,"end_s":302.4,"text":"there anything that can reliably push gen 4 today","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":300.88,"end_s":306.56,"text":"productivity maybe on the NVIDIA side it starts out pretty","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":304.639,"end_s":311.68,"text":"bleak blender sees only a modest improvement in cuda mode while optics is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":308.72,"end_s":316.56,"text":"a complete wash but then we quickly found an improvement in v-ray where we","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":313.759,"end_s":321.039,"text":"saw measurable bumps in both cuda and rtx enabled workflows davinci resolve","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":319.12,"end_s":325.28,"text":"too gives us a modest little performance increase and the same is true for adobe","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":322.96,"end_s":328.56,"text":"photoshop although that last one in particular was somewhat unexpected","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":327.199,"end_s":332.24,"text":"things start to peter out again with luxmark4 though where we're looking at a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":330.32,"end_s":336.479,"text":"roughly three percent improvement and octane bench doesn't meaningfully","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":333.84,"end_s":341.12,"text":"improve at all as for spec view perf 2020 most of this is so close that we","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":339.28,"end_s":346.24,"text":"might as well call it a tie outside of maya's stand out","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":343.52,"end_s":350.96,"text":"one percent increase over gen 3. moving over to AMD the blender opencl result is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":349.039,"end_s":355.68,"text":"basically the same between gen 3 and gen 4 but unlike NVIDIA davinci resolve and","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":353.84,"end_s":360.16,"text":"adobe photoshop don't see a major improvement in performance either","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":357.759,"end_s":366.319,"text":"curiously though where NVIDIA stumbled at luxmark AMD shines with a hefty 27","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":364.479,"end_s":370.88,"text":"improvement in the food render and eleven percent in the hall bench that is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":369.12,"end_s":374.8,"text":"definitely nothing to sneeze at if you use lux core renderer","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":372.72,"end_s":378.24,"text":"finally spec view perf brings AMD back to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":375.919,"end_s":381.199,"text":"they're the same picture territory with little to show for the extra bandwidth","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":379.68,"end_s":385.36,"text":"that gen 4 offers again maya stands out as","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":383.28,"end_s":391.28,"text":"maybe slightly better but it's nothing that you're going to want to replace your motherboard for these numbers both","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":388.8,"end_s":395.919,"text":"agree with and also contradict some of the earlier results found not only by us","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":393.52,"end_s":400.72,"text":"when we reviewed the Radeon rx 5700 series but also by gamersnexus who did a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":398.72,"end_s":404.8,"text":"full video on gen4 performance back in september what this shows us is that","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":402.639,"end_s":408.96,"text":"there's been some quiet movement between then and now with advances in CPU","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":407.039,"end_s":415.919,"text":"performance on the platforms that support gen 4 perhaps being the biggest","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":412.319,"end_s":419.28,"text":"we used a ryzen 5950x today that is a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":415.919,"end_s":422.0,"text":"significantly faster CPU than the 3900x","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":419.28,"end_s":426.8,"text":"that we used last time and the 3900xt that gamersnexus used in their video so","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":424.8,"end_s":430.8,"text":"could it be that Intel's upcoming rocket lake cpus could hold the key to even","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":428.88,"end_s":433.919,"text":"better gen 4 performance we will be checking it out so get","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":432.479,"end_s":438.4,"text":"subscribed to make sure you don't miss it whatever Intel has up its sleeve","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":435.68,"end_s":444.96,"text":"though pci express gen 4 and up for that matter really weren't made for consumers","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":441.039,"end_s":446.8,"text":"anyway at least not directly i mean it's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":444.96,"end_s":451.84,"text":"great for hooking up more devices to a motherboard chipset a faster link here","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":449.919,"end_s":458.319,"text":"means faster storage ports faster network ports more usb ports etc etc","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":455.599,"end_s":462.96,"text":"but for most people the benefit of gen 4 is pretty small compared to simply","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":460.24,"end_s":467.759,"text":"having a faster CPU it's just that you can't really get a faster CPU without","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":465.28,"end_s":471.84,"text":"going gen 4. no the real reason pci express keeps getting faster is because","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":469.759,"end_s":476.08,"text":"of the data center and then we just get their trickle-down technology","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":474.0,"end_s":479.28,"text":"in a data center it's not so that they can just","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":477.199,"end_s":484.479,"text":"shove faster devices into their racks i mean that is a thing but it's more about","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":482.16,"end_s":489.919,"text":"being able to shove more devices into them and using features like bifurcation","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":486.879,"end_s":491.759,"text":"and devices like pci express switches to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":489.919,"end_s":496.16,"text":"split the lanes if you've got faster lanes you not only","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":494.24,"end_s":500.72,"text":"can have faster devices for the same number of lanes you can have more","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":498.56,"end_s":505.44,"text":"devices with the same number of lanes without sacrificing the speed that you","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":502.72,"end_s":510.08,"text":"already have incidentally that's exactly what we're doing with our high speed","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":507.12,"end_s":516.0,"text":"NVMe storage server we've got a gen 4 carrier card that has eight gen 3 ssds","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":513.279,"end_s":519.839,"text":"on it running at full speed if we put that card into a gen 3 slot they would","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":518.159,"end_s":525.04,"text":"end up being bottlenecked because natively that slot only has enough lanes","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":522.56,"end_s":528.24,"text":"for four ssds which actually got us thinking","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":526.0,"end_s":532.56,"text":"what if i'm not just a gamer what if i want to use my system as a workstation","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":530.24,"end_s":536.399,"text":"by day and gaming rig by night and plug in like two graphics cards for some","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":534.56,"end_s":540.8,"text":"heavy workloads ah okay","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":537.92,"end_s":545.44,"text":"so some motherboards like our MSI x570 godlike are capable of bifurcating pci","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":543.519,"end_s":550.56,"text":"express lanes that means they can take a 16 lane slot like this one up here and","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":548.08,"end_s":554.72,"text":"split those lanes out to multiple physical slots allowing more than one","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":552.88,"end_s":559.44,"text":"device to share the bandwidth that otherwise would have gone to a single","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":556.88,"end_s":564.24,"text":"device to find out if this helps we installed a second rtx 3090 in our","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":561.92,"end_s":569.68,"text":"system and ran our benchmarks at least the ones that benefit from dual GPU in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":566.56,"end_s":570.88,"text":"gen 3 and gen 4 modes again","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":569.68,"end_s":574.8,"text":"and turns out that there's not much benefit","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":572.8,"end_s":579.04,"text":"here right now either the few benchmarks where there were","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":576.64,"end_s":583.519,"text":"improvements with gen 4 were v-ray by about two or three percent and luxmark","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":581.6,"end_s":588.16,"text":"by about a single percentage point that's it a little anticlimactic but if","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":586.399,"end_s":592.72,"text":"you think about it these kinds of workloads aren't going to scale linearly","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":590.399,"end_s":596.64,"text":"in terms of bandwidth required anyway and where we'd be more likely to see a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":594.32,"end_s":600.8,"text":"significant improvement is in crunching deep learning data sets but","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":598.959,"end_s":605.519,"text":"that's a workload that does skew quite a bit closer to the data center than to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":602.72,"end_s":611.279,"text":"the desktop also in the data center they might have quite a lot more than two","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":607.68,"end_s":613.2,"text":"devices per 16 lanes anyway don't fret","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":611.279,"end_s":617.36,"text":"it took a while for gen 3 to be fully utilized when that took over from gen 2","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":615.2,"end_s":620.64,"text":"as well so now that AMD has had a generation of support and Intel is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":619.279,"end_s":624.56,"text":"bringing it with their upcoming rocket lake cpus we are headed in the right","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":622.72,"end_s":628.24,"text":"direction just in time for direct storage to start making proper use of it","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":627.12,"end_s":634.32,"text":"we hope and besides a few percent improvement is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":631.2,"end_s":637.519,"text":"nothing to sneeze at you start with some","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":634.32,"end_s":639.92,"text":"gen 4 PCIe toss in some resizable bar","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":637.519,"end_s":643.839,"text":"support sprinkle on faster RAM and a pinch of community optimizations and all","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":642.399,"end_s":647.36,"text":"of a sudden you've got a pretty compelling generational upgrades so you","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":646.079,"end_s":653.519,"text":"know what i say keep it coming just like i keep the sponsors coming big","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":651.44,"end_s":657.92,"text":"thanks to MSI for providing us all the equipment and sponsoring this deep dive","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":655.519,"end_s":661.839,"text":"into pci express gen 3 vs gen 4 performance go check them out we used","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":660.16,"end_s":666.32,"text":"their top end stuff here but their gaming x trio cards are also great for","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":664.079,"end_s":672.48,"text":"performance and they have a wide range of motherboards x570 b550 to satisfy","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":669.519,"end_s":676.72,"text":"your ryzen fix oh and of course their z490 boards are already wired for gen 4","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":675.2,"end_s":680.32,"text":"when rocket lake launches so we're going to have all that linked down below","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":678.8,"end_s":684.959,"text":"thanks for watching guys if you enjoyed this one maybe go check out our video on","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":682.64,"end_s":689.68,"text":"the server that liquid sent us for a taste of just how fast pci express can","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":687.76,"end_s":692.32,"text":"go when you load it up with enough devices","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0}],"full_text":"surely a shiny new pci express gen 4 system is going to absolutely blow the doors off your old gen 3 one right well yes but maybe not for the reason that you would think MSI sponsored this video where we are going to be digging deep into the performance impact of turbo charging your pci express speed why did they sponsor that when their marketing so prominently features pci express gen 4 you might ask cause MSI don't give a what PCIe gen you buy as long as it's MSI so lol here we go if you've never heard of our Techquickie channel and you're wondering what the sun i think this backplate actually took the brunt of it oh nice if you've never heard of our Techquickie channel and you're wondering what the sam hill of pci express is the tldr is it's the method that modern cpus use to communicate with virtually everything else in your pc and the total bandwidth available to it for high speed graphics or storage or networking is determined by two things the number of lanes the CPU can allocate to a device and the speed at which those lanes can operate think of pci express kind of like a highway adding more lanes is challenging because it requires more interconnects which makes the components larger and more complex adding cost by contrast if you could just make all the cars drive faster that's way more economical as long as you can keep them from crashing so engineers at pci sig and its members have been working hard to improve data integrity allowing these pci express links or lanes to reach higher and higher clock speeds each generation since the first has roughly doubled the speed of each individual lane with pci express gen 4 offering nearly 2 gigabytes per second per lane that means that our featured card here an MSI GeForce rtx 3090 supreme x can be fed at nearly 32 gigabytes per second on a compliant motherboard and good thing right because it not only boasts the most powerful GPU on the market it's factory overclocked to boot so armed with only the information you have so far you'd probably think that pci express gen 4 is an absolute necessity for gamers and power users everywhere but a theory is just that a theory we need to put it to the test so we'll be using a ryzen 9 5950x and a top of the line MSI x570 godlike motherboard to remove as many other system bottlenecks as possible we're also going to throw an rx 6900xt into the mix for team red representation starting with NVIDIA our rtx 3090 pulls roughly the same numbers in shadow of the tomb raider with a slight dip in gen 3's 95th percentile minimums what that means is that the experience is generally the same except that when the game hitches or stutters it's a little bit more severe on gen 3 though we couldn't detect it with the human eye in this case in fact the difference wasn't much beyond our margin of error in any of the tests that we ran including forza horizon 4 f1 2020 and red dead redemption 2 where gen 3 frame rates are consistently a frame or two behind gen 4 but no more where the pattern doesn't hold is in cs go check out that 60 FPS minimum frame rate drop and 50 FPS average loss for whatever reason this game seems to absolutely hammer the pci express bus compared to other newer titles that we tested so the faster these transfers can happen the better on AMD the story is much the same shadow of the tomb raider doesn't see any variation and we're only a frame off in forza horizon 4. f1 2020 and red dead redemption 2 also show only a modest difference on gen 4 versus gen 3 but then again look at those cs go scores we've gone from over 400 FPS average with gen 4 to just 311 in gen 3. that's a difference of almost 30 percent from these results then it's clear that these kinds of gains are rare but they are out there if you're running the right applications also we expect this speed to become more important as direct storage makes its way into pc games if you haven't heard of direct storage it is functionally similar to the way that the playstation 5 and the xbox series is allow the graphics chip to bypass other system bottlenecks and directly access your game storage drive for faster loading times and sony says with their implementation even real-time asset streaming that's still a ways off on the pc though so in the meantime is there anything that can reliably push gen 4 today productivity maybe on the NVIDIA side it starts out pretty bleak blender sees only a modest improvement in cuda mode while optics is a complete wash but then we quickly found an improvement in v-ray where we saw measurable bumps in both cuda and rtx enabled workflows davinci resolve too gives us a modest little performance increase and the same is true for adobe photoshop although that last one in particular was somewhat unexpected things start to peter out again with luxmark4 though where we're looking at a roughly three percent improvement and octane bench doesn't meaningfully improve at all as for spec view perf 2020 most of this is so close that we might as well call it a tie outside of maya's stand out one percent increase over gen 3. moving over to AMD the blender opencl result is basically the same between gen 3 and gen 4 but unlike NVIDIA davinci resolve and adobe photoshop don't see a major improvement in performance either curiously though where NVIDIA stumbled at luxmark AMD shines with a hefty 27 improvement in the food render and eleven percent in the hall bench that is definitely nothing to sneeze at if you use lux core renderer finally spec view perf brings AMD back to they're the same picture territory with little to show for the extra bandwidth that gen 4 offers again maya stands out as maybe slightly better but it's nothing that you're going to want to replace your motherboard for these numbers both agree with and also contradict some of the earlier results found not only by us when we reviewed the Radeon rx 5700 series but also by gamersnexus who did a full video on gen4 performance back in september what this shows us is that there's been some quiet movement between then and now with advances in CPU performance on the platforms that support gen 4 perhaps being the biggest we used a ryzen 5950x today that is a significantly faster CPU than the 3900x that we used last time and the 3900xt that gamersnexus used in their video so could it be that Intel's upcoming rocket lake cpus could hold the key to even better gen 4 performance we will be checking it out so get subscribed to make sure you don't miss it whatever Intel has up its sleeve though pci express gen 4 and up for that matter really weren't made for consumers anyway at least not directly i mean it's great for hooking up more devices to a motherboard chipset a faster link here means faster storage ports faster network ports more usb ports etc etc but for most people the benefit of gen 4 is pretty small compared to simply having a faster CPU it's just that you can't really get a faster CPU without going gen 4. no the real reason pci express keeps getting faster is because of the data center and then we just get their trickle-down technology in a data center it's not so that they can just shove faster devices into their racks i mean that is a thing but it's more about being able to shove more devices into them and using features like bifurcation and devices like pci express switches to split the lanes if you've got faster lanes you not only can have faster devices for the same number of lanes you can have more devices with the same number of lanes without sacrificing the speed that you already have incidentally that's exactly what we're doing with our high speed NVMe storage server we've got a gen 4 carrier card that has eight gen 3 ssds on it running at full speed if we put that card into a gen 3 slot they would end up being bottlenecked because natively that slot only has enough lanes for four ssds which actually got us thinking what if i'm not just a gamer what if i want to use my system as a workstation by day and gaming rig by night and plug in like two graphics cards for some heavy workloads ah okay so some motherboards like our MSI x570 godlike are capable of bifurcating pci express lanes that means they can take a 16 lane slot like this one up here and split those lanes out to multiple physical slots allowing more than one device to share the bandwidth that otherwise would have gone to a single device to find out if this helps we installed a second rtx 3090 in our system and ran our benchmarks at least the ones that benefit from dual GPU in gen 3 and gen 4 modes again and turns out that there's not much benefit here right now either the few benchmarks where there were improvements with gen 4 were v-ray by about two or three percent and luxmark by about a single percentage point that's it a little anticlimactic but if you think about it these kinds of workloads aren't going to scale linearly in terms of bandwidth required anyway and where we'd be more likely to see a significant improvement is in crunching deep learning data sets but that's a workload that does skew quite a bit closer to the data center than to the desktop also in the data center they might have quite a lot more than two devices per 16 lanes anyway don't fret it took a while for gen 3 to be fully utilized when that took over from gen 2 as well so now that AMD has had a generation of support and Intel is bringing it with their upcoming rocket lake cpus we are headed in the right direction just in time for direct storage to start making proper use of it we hope and besides a few percent improvement is nothing to sneeze at you start with some gen 4 PCIe toss in some resizable bar support sprinkle on faster RAM and a pinch of community optimizations and all of a sudden you've got a pretty compelling generational upgrades so you know what i say keep it coming just like i keep the sponsors coming big thanks to MSI for providing us all the equipment and sponsoring this deep dive into pci express gen 3 vs gen 4 performance go check them out we used their top end stuff here but their gaming x trio cards are also great for performance and they have a wide range of motherboards x570 b550 to satisfy your ryzen fix oh and of course their z490 boards are already wired for gen 4 when rocket lake launches so we're going to have all that linked down below thanks for watching guys if you enjoyed this one maybe go check out our video on the server that liquid sent us for a taste of just how fast pci express can go when you load it up with enough devices"}