Or unfortunately, for the unlucky people who didn't do their research, so now their extra M.2 drives are sucking up some of their GPU's PCIe bus.
I wish you didn't have to buy Xeon or Threadripper to get considerably more PCIe lanes, but for most people I suspect this split is acceptable. The penalty for gaming going from 16x to 8x is pretty small.
> 1x PCI Express x16 slot (PCIEX16), integrated in the CPU:
> AMD Ryzen™ 9000/7000 Series Processors support PCIe 5.0 x16 mode
> * The M2B_CPU and M2C_CPU connectors share bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot.
> When theM2B_CPU orM2C_CPU connector is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.
[1]: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X870E-AORUS-PRO-ICE-rev...
I use ROG board that has 4 PCIe slots. While each can physically seat an x16 card, only one of them has 16 lanes -- the rest are x4. I had to demote my GPU to a slower slot in order to get full throughput from my 100GbE card. All this despite having a CPU with 64 lanes available.
[0] shows a pretty "worst case" impact of 1-4% - that's on the absolute highest-end card possible (a geforce 5090) and pushing it down to 16x PCIe3.0. A lower end card would likely show an even smaller difference. They even showed zero impact from 16xPCIe4.0, which is the same bandwidth as 8x of the PCIe5.0 lanes supported on X870E boards like you mentioned.
Though if you're not on a gaming use case and know you're already PCIe limited it could be larger - but people who have that sort of use case likely already know what to look for, and have systems tuned to that use case more than "generic consumer gamer board"
[0] https://gamersnexus.net/gpus/nvidia-rtx-5090-pcie-50-vs-40-v...
But that's the whole point of Intel's market segmentation strategy - otherwise their low-tier workstation Xeons would see no market.
It has a 4x SSD and a 16x GPU. Their respective tools report them as using all the lanes, which is clearly impossible if I'm to believe Intel's specs.
Could this bifurcation be dynamic, and activate those lanes which are required at a given time?
But, if you had the nicer chipsets, wikipedia says your board could split the 16 cpu lanes into two x8 slots or one x8 and 2 x4 slots, which would fit. This would usually be dynamic at boot time, not at runtime; the firmware would typically look if anything is in the x4 slots and if so, set bifurcation, otherwise the x16 gets all the lanes. Some motherboards do have PCI-e switches to use the bandwidth more flexibly, but those got really expensive; i think at the transition to pci-e 4.0, but maybe 3.0?
SATA ports are far scarcer these days though and there’s more PCIE bandwidth available anyways, so it’s not surprising that there aren’t conflicts as often anymore.
[1] A620 is cut down, but everything else is actually the same chip (or two)
Steve from gamers nexus tests new GPUs on older PCIe gens and the difference is negligible. And since PCIe always doubled bandwidth with generations it's effectively the same as running on half bus speed.
I run an Intel A380 for Linux and a NVIDIA 3060 for a Windows VM (I'm a bit cheap). I opted for using some Intel SATA6 datacenter drives we decommissioned from work over using more PCIe for storage, but the performance is outstanding.
Modern game engines don't need all those gigabytes per second. If you're doing AI maybe it matters, but then you probably hopefully maybe won't cheap out on consumer CPUs with 20 PCIe lanes either.
For homelab purposes I'd rather have two Gen3 x8 slots than one Gen5 x4 slot, as that'd allow me to use a (now ancient) 25G NIC and a HBA. Similarly I'd rather have four Gen5 x1 slots than one Gen5 x4 slot, as Gen5 NVMe SSDs are readily available and even a single Gen5 lane is enough to saturate a 25G network connection and it'd allow me to attach four SSDs instead of only one.
The consumer platforms have more than enough IO bandwidth for some rather interesting home server stuff, it just isn't allocated in a useful way.
other issues you mention are only "firmware disabled". chipsets are capable of bifurcation, so maybe try to visit some chinese / russian firmware hacking forums... i found out that server and consumer icelake generation is fully "cracked" open on there for years. there you can find all sorts of "BIOS" generators which can generate "BIOS" of your liking.
cheapest way to do what you describe (after fiddling with your "BIOS", "firmware") is by buying NVME HBA, which are just renamed PCIE switch ICs.... ;) brand name PCIE4 switch can be bought for 1000-1200 dollars retail, it will allow you to bifurcate to x1 but im not sure about prices for pcie5.
or if you want more costly but out of box working device try looking at [ https://www.h3platform.com/product-detail/Topology/24 ]
and do not forget that newer intel PC have USB with 40 gbps... so do you really need 25 gbps eth ? linux / BSD does not care what you transfer over USB (ETH/ipv6 encapsulated in USB)...
EDIT: you can buy HBA with 8 x4 connectors. this HBA/switch is connected to your pc over PCIE4 x8... 8 times 4 = 32 =x8 port... so you get x1 speeds, you can connect only one lane on x4, etc. out of box thinking.
What does this mean? Did they jack up prices?
Same thing that Avego did with Broadcom, LSI, Brocade etc... during the 2010's, buy a market leader, dump the parts that they didn't want, leaving a huge hole in the market.
When you realize that Avego was the brand produced when KKR and Silver Lake bought the chip biz from Agilent, it is just the typical private equity play, buy your market position and sell off or shut down the parts you don't care about.
Scumbags.
It is even possible to have linux machine act as a display port sink to be used as a capture card, for streamers, youtubers,... with 0 dollar investment, 0 hardware...
The driver has been built in to Windows for years, as it's the same tech as Thunderbolt networking. Just plug two Thunderbolt or USB4
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/co...
> and 4 line patch to enable this in linux?
Supported since kernel 4.15 in early 2018.
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.15/admin-guide/thunderbol...
> It is even possible to have linux machine act as a display port sink to be used as a capture card, for streamers, youtubers,... with 0 dollar investment, 0 hardware...
This is not true. When a USB-C connection is being used in DisplayPort Alternate Mode two or four of the high-speed pairs in the cable are literally switched from being connected to the USB controller to being connected to the DisplayPort controller. Both the source and sink devices have to support the same alternate modes to operate, so you would still need to have actual DisplayPort sink hardware to capture a DP-on-USBC signal. DisplayPort capture hardware is rare on its own compared to HDMI capture, I don't think there's a single one out there that takes a USB-C DP Alt Mode input because there's no real reason to ever do that.
display port sink - ah ok i thought it is some sort of tunneling. but it is just mux/switch + retimer. so only one way.
edit: Also meant to mention that while Thunderbolt has always been rare on AMD due to its requirement of an Intel chip, USB4 is somewhat common nowadays as it's officially supported on the Zen 3+ and newer CPUs
but mac recovery is magical, wifi password is written in NVRAM and if you erased/replaced whole disk, "recovery agent" started and downloaded macos image over wifi and installed it ! it was on intel mac, im not sure if it still works same way in arm. it took 2 hours XD
apples firewire and tb had problems with security, it was possible to do DMA reads from your ram over those. from external device.
Not true; basically everyone shipping laptops with Firewire ports in that era was at risk of DMA attacks. Apple was merely the most notable vendor trying to offer something better than USB 2.0.
> has nothing to do with any product segmentation
Go look at which Intel Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processors had VT-d (IOMMU) capability enabled vs disabled. The product segmentation strategy is on plain display. They made overclocking mutually exclusive with IOMMU for several generations of processor. There's no technological basis for that, just artificial product segmentation.
Please put at least a little bit of effort into fact-checking yourself before continuing ranting. It's not that hard, and you'll be much more convincing if you don't exaggerate your complaints to the point of being obviously wrong.
I think the core problem is that "transferring bulk data directly between two computers" is not a problem that many people actually have. At least, not in a way that isn't solved by other means like an intermediate USB drive or simply waiting for your conventional network to do it.
In reality, what you propose can be done with zero software: simply put two USB network adapters back to back inside your cable. That's traditionally how this has been done. If you want a raw USB connection, one device must support USB device mode, which is extremely rare on PCs. I don't know if you can fix this in userland, or even the kernel. My bet is that this is a hardware/firmware level feature, though I don't know for sure.
power delivery (even thru some kind of splitter)
+ 20/40gbps network for syncing AND internet (wifi is constantly down rating connection which does annoying delays, latencies, i live in high rise...)
https://fangpenlin.com/posts/2024/01/14/high-speed-usb4-mesh...
The distance isn't great for USB/Thunderbolt 4 cables so it would really only make sense for cluster computing and since no switches exist for this kind of thing, you're limited in network topology. Generally, the kind of PCs that you'd need a fat pipe connected to already have the slots and lanes available for 40G or 100G cards. It's a cool experiment for the homelab but it's clear the industry isn't interested.
or in that article it is possible usb4 controller is sharing bandwidth with some other device or it is only 20gbps PER controller and he has connected 2 cables to same computer in middle. so 10 IN + 10 OUT is 20gbps ? maybe if he tries to measure speeds for only neighboring machines it would be 20gbps ? but his speed is 11.8 so does not make sense either. i do not know.
i was thinking for home use, when i come home with notebook i can quickly sync it to nas. both have NVME drives so 3-4 GBps should be possible. especially video. also not needing wifi, because im connected thru same cable im charging is awesome.
also recovery/ssd cloning is nicer on quick connection.
virtual machines can stay on nas too with those speeds. no need to copy.
>just charge 2 dollars per year and youll be milionaire
I don't know, why don't you do it? Sounds like easy money.
I bought this a while ago and it works: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004F9LVXC?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_... (but is no longer available)
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PS3/comments/1fjbzrz/comment/lp93nd...
I don't know if anybody has managed to figure out how to defeat hdcp higher than 1.4 though.
This works for me: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08T64JWWT
I'd have expected HDMI LA to be very very strict in enforcing actions against HDCP strippers. If not, why even keep up the game? It's not like pirates can already defeat virtually all copy protection mechanisms on the market, even before HDCP ever enters the field.
How is 1 review a "high number of 1-star reviews"?
There are a total of 32 reviews for this device, 2 of which are 1-star reviews. Only one of those warns "Stopped working in 5 minutes". The other 1-star review notes (in translation) "When I tried this device, I got another very bad device at a lower price".
I'm not sure what your expectation that "HDMI LA to be very very strict in enforcing actions against HDCP strippers" means in this context. Indeed, your second paragraph seems to be an expression of consternation that manufacturers would go through the trouble of implementing HDCP given how easily it can be circumvented.
It used to be the case that HDMI LA would act very swiftly on any keybox leaks and revoke the certificates, as well as pursuing legal actions against sellers of HDCP strippers. These devices were sold by fly-by-night eBay and darknet sellers, not right on the storefront of Amazon.
> Indeed, your second paragraph seems to be an expression of consternation that manufacturers would go through the trouble of implementing HDCP given how easily it can be circumvented.
Manufacturers do because HDCP is a requirement to even be allowed to use the HDMI trademark, in contrast to DisplayPort. I was referring to HDMI LA and the goons of the movie rightsholder industry that insist on continuing this pointless arms race.
These random letters brands stores come and go so quickly that I guess they sell under a different name by the time your lawyer had the time to send a letter.
If the Amazon listing ships from the United States it's a better choice now.
example: https://community.frame.work/t/oculink-egpu-works-with-the-d...
Most "reputable" embedded system/board vendors in the x86 space are going to offer a firmware customization tool, with one of the primary uses being so that you can brand the splash screen at startup. That gets you an image as soon as the firmware brings up the display controller, which should be very fast (i.e. well under a second). YMMV for less supported embedded systems, particularly those with more complicated/proprietary display bringup.
Depending on the display in question (assuming you can control the display in use), you may have the ability to configure a splash screen in the display controller itself (the display controller vendor can certainly do this, whether or not they expose it to you is the question).
The most complicated (but also most flexible) option is to get whatever the simplest FPGA that can support a HDMI TX and a HDMI RX for the display resolution you desire. Then you build whatever splash screen you want into the FPGA firmware, and whatever boot-finished detection you want to handle the switch from internal splash image to HDMI RX. You'll get the splash screen essentially as soon as your FPGA and HDMI TX power on. If you really know what you're doing, you could even get HDCP passthrough from the embedded system to the display to work here, although you probably can ignore that.
Except... not at all? Just about any ATX-sized motherboard is going to have a full-sized X4 slot and a small X1 slot _in addition_ to the X16 one.
And with decent audio and 2.5GBps ethernet PHY on board even those slots often sit disused.
I mean, want to test goofy hardware - go for it, no need to invent a justification.
Those Gen3 x1 slots are limited to 7.88Gbps so they are pretty pointless for anything beyond a sound card, and you only get a single Gen4 x4 slot. All the other x4 connections are taken up by M.2!
Want to add a capture card and a HBA? Not enough slots. Want to add a capture card and a 10G/25G NIC? Not enough slots. Want to add a capture card and a USB-C expansion card? Not enough slots.
This reviewer tested the M.2 capture card with two 1080p60 signals that have a data rate of 3.2Gbps each, so a PCIe gen3 x1 slot would have been plenty of bandwidth for this use case (but not for capturing at 4k).
Don't make the mistake of believing that a device which has lots of PCIe lanes actually needs all of them active to fulfill its purpose and be useful.