Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master VS Pro

[OverDrive]

Hi everyone,

I am starting to consider board options for my upcoming move to AM5/X850E.

I have been very happy with my Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra, which I understand to be a mid-tier board in that range. Is the X850E Aorus Pro the equivalent of it? Also, why is there such a big price difference between the Master and Pro? (circa £150).

The following is from the descriptions for each on the OCUK store. I would be grateful if someone would help me understand this. In particular the PCIEX16 lanes / shared bandwidth part. I think I understand that using either of the specified M.2 slots will reduce the PCIEX16 lane to x8 mode. However, am I right in thinking that this can be avoided by using an M.2 slot that is controlled by the chipset instead?

I plan to move my 4090 and 1TB Corsair MP600 M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD over. However, I don't want to cripple the speed of anything by doing this, should I just upgrade to a PCIe 5.0 SSD too?

Master:

• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot (PCIEX16), integrated in the CPU
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 4.0 and running at x4 (PCIEX4_1)
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 3.0 and running at x4 (PCIEX4_2)

Pro:
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.
AMD Ryzen™ 8000 Series-Phoenix 1 Processors support PCIe 4.0 x8 mode
AMD Ryzen™ 8000 Series-Phoenix 2 Processors support PCIe 4.0 x4 mode
(The PCIEX16 slot can only support a graphics card or an NVMe SSD. If only one graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.)

Chipset:
- 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 4.0 and running at x4 (PCIEX4_1)
- 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 3.0 and running at x4 (PCIEX4_2)

I have been very happy with my Gigabyte board, however, I am happy to consider other options too.

Thank you.

 

[Tetras]

the equivalent of it?

It is hard to match boards to the X570 range anymore, because AM5 (as a platform) is a pretty big upgrade and even most of the B650 boards (the non-E) version are somewhat comparable to X570, except for the really low-end ones.

I plan to move my 4090 and 1TB Corsair MP600 M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD over. However, I don't want to cripple the speed of anything by doing this, should I just upgrade to a PCIe 5.0 SSD too?

There are few workloads that are meaningfully bottlenecked by the SSD's bandwidth, so for the average user it'd be a waste.

I think I understand that using either of the specified M.2 slots will reduce the PCIEX16 lane to x8 mode. However, am I right in thinking that this can be avoided by using an M.2 slot that is controlled by the chipset instead?

In general, Ryzen 7000/9000 CPUs are able to offer you 2x PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots and a 16 lane PCI-E 5.0 graphics slot with no compromise (at least, that's available on X670E).

If a board wants to offer 3x PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots, they have a problem, hence stealing the lanes from the graphics card is one of the fixes.

Yes, using a chipset M.2 slot has no impact on the GPU (though always check the manual, these things get buried sometimes).

Also, why is there such a big price difference between the Master and Pro? (circa £150).

A few things I can see:
- 5Gb LAN versus 2.5 Gb LAN.
- 8-layer PCB versus 6-layer PCB.
- 110A versus 80A power stages.
- Large RGB display panel on the I/O cover (Is it programmable? Not sure.)
- DTS:X-Ultra

I didn't check rear I/O.