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All you need to know about the PCIe port on motherboards and its utility


The PCIe 4.0 port is the fourth version of the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express port, as well as PCIe 5.0 is the fifth generation of it, which is used to connect external devices to the motherboard in order to operate the computer and improve its performance, and these devices include GPU graphics battery and Wi-Fi, Ethernet cards, SSD and more, and the fourth version of PCIe offers better performance and greater speed than the previous generation, as it doubles the available bandwidth for the devices that are connected through it, and it is important to know more about it before assembling a gaming computer in 2021.


And for those who do not know what a PCIe port is, it is a relatively new type of port on the motherboard for connecting external devices, and it was introduced by Intel in 2004 to replace the regular plug-in port and of course it provides better performance and much more speed as it is constantly updated, as it appeared from it The fourth versions are PCIe 4.0 and the fifth PCIe 5.0 during the past two years. Below, we introduce you to these two releases and the features of each in detail.

Specifications of different versions of PCIe

PCIe 4.0 ports consist through one lane or multiples of four lanes such as x1, x4, x8, x16, and x32 and as lanes are doubled, the bandwidth also doubles for each generation over the previous generation, for example PCIe 3.0 x8 can be replaced by the third generation With PCIe 4.0 x4 of the fourth generation with the same performance despite the difference in the number of lanes between them, the following is the bandwidth, speed and some important information regarding the PCIe port from the first version to the fifth version:


First PCIe 1.0:


Bandwidth: 8 GB / s

Transfer rate: 2.5 GT / s

Frequency: 2.5GHz

Encryption: 8b / 10b


PCIe 2.0:


Bandwidth: 16 GB / s

Transfer rate: 5GHz

Frequency: 5.0GHz

Encryption: 8b / 10b


Third PCIe 3.0:


Bandwidth: 32GB / s

Transfer rate: 8GHz

Frequency: 8GHz

Encryption: 128b / 130b


Fourth PCIe 4.0:


Bandwidth: 64 GB / s

Transfer rate: 16GHz

Frequency: 16GHz

Encryption: 128b / 130b


PCIe 5.0:


Bandwidth: 128GB / s

Transfer rate: 32GHz

Frequency: 32GHz

Encryption: 128b / 130b


PCIe version compatibility


Despite the clear differences in specifications between the previous versions, newer versions such as PCIe 4.0 maintain compatibility with previous versions, meaning that PCIe 3.0 cards still work on motherboards that support, and PCIe 4.0 cards will also work on motherboards that support PCIe 3.0 but it will run at the lower specification i.e. PCIe 3.0 specification.


The third generation PCIe 3.0 was launched in 2010, while its subsidiary PCIe 4.0 was released in 2017, about seven years after the previous generation, and in January 2019 AMD announced that the X570 motherboard will support the PCIe 4.0 port, and motherboard manufacturers will also be able to Also, from updating the firmware of the motherboard on about 300 and 400 motherboards, with the aim of obtaining partial support for PCIe 4.0 instead of full support for it. Also in January 2019, Taiwanese chipmaker Phison announced the world's first PCIe 4.0 SSD that had data read speeds of 4 GB / s and 4.2 GB / s.


Fifth generation: PCIe 5


The fifth version PCIe 5 comes with better specifications than its previous generations, as it comes with much faster speed and higher frequency, and it was officially announced in May 2019, and PCIe 5 has provided a lot of long-awaited capabilities for system designers, specifically those who create new applications based on the cloud. And applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning, but do you know why?


The reason for this is that the fifth generation PCIe 5 delivers twice the bit transfer rate of the previous generation PCIe 4 at 32 GB / s versus 16 GB / s for PCIe 4, and PCIe 5 also features that its higher transfer rates allow system designers to balance Bandwidth requirements are simpler by working with fewer lanes for specific applications such as 40GigE and SSD, and more demanding high-bandwidth applications like AI and ML can also take full advantage of the x16 lane.


Not only that, but the tremendous capabilities available in the system could provide system designers with more important advantages, as it is likely that PCIe 5 is the technological cornerstone of interconnections, for example Intel announced earlier that interconnection The Compute eXpress Link (CXL) slave cache will use the PCIe 5 standard Physical Layer (PHY) specification.






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