New AMD X670(E)/B650 motherboards - do they have USB4 or not?

[Orcvader]

I didn't ask what it is, I said "what's the deal" as in why do you guys care about it in this context. I then asked if it was because you wanted to charge your phones as I knew it supplied a higher voltage. Any way, perhaps my fault as well for not being clearer, it is what it is.

The thing is, even though it provides more power the bare minimum is still 7.5W, which is still rather slow for charging.

I see this more useful for laptops since it's compatible with Thunderbolt, and will allow AMD based devices to connect to things like eGPUs. There's other cool Thunderbolt accessories but for the average user, I guess there's no immediate benefit.

 

[PeegeeTips]

in the age of cheap 2TB nvme drives transferring at 7GB/s plus it's nice not to have your external storage transfer stalling at ~1GB/s.

and because USB 3.2 2x2 is an orphan standard that will never see mass adoption - and is not even a fallback speed for USB4 (goes back to 10Gbps) - then you are looking at a 4x drop in IO speed by not getting your shiny new rig with USB4.

going to quote this in case it was missed before.

 

[highhat6]

Be careful when checking the Motherboards. CPU lanes are still not great and some motherboards will either run the M2's from the chipset at PCI-E 4 or reduce the x16 PCI-e slot to an X8 if used. COnsidering the bandwidth an x8 pci-e 5 slot will still be very fast but worth considering if you are specifically trying to benchmark or have a particular need for graphics with a super fast x16 bus

 

[Grim5]

Be careful when checking the Motherboards. CPU lanes are still not great and some motherboards will either run the M2's from the chipset at PCI-E 4 or reduce the x16 PCI-e slot to an X8 if used. COnsidering the bandwidth an x8 pci-e 5 slot will still be very fast but worth considering if you are specifically trying to benchmark or have a particular need for graphics with a super fast x16 bus

Yes! Derbauer showed that the Gigabyte Aorus Extreme has this problem, if you stick an Nvme drive in one of the slots that runs off the same lanes as the GPU the GPU lanes will drop down to pcie4 x8 and likely reduce GPU performance. So gamers need to be careful which Nvme slots they use and make sure the board they want can support all their drives without damaging gaming performance

So when you see these fancy boards claim they can handle 4 or 5 gen 5 drives at the same time, it's because half of the slots share lanes. X670e and Zen4 doesn't have enough lanes to support everything at full speed

 

[Conor Royston]

Yes! Derbauer showed that the Gigabyte Aorus Extreme has this problem, if you stick an Nvme drive in one of the slots that runs off the same lanes as the GPU the GPU lanes will drop down to pcie4 x8 and likely reduce GPU performance. So gamers need to be careful which Nvme slots they use and make sure the board they want can support all their drives without damaging gaming performance

So when you see these fancy boards claim they can handle 4 or 5 gen 5 drives at the same time, it's because half of the slots share lanes. X670e and Zen4 doesn't have enough lanes to support everything at full speed

100% this.
Also, I'm actually someone that bought the new AMD Asus X660x Hero, and I've gone through the manual fully 3/4 times. I still can't find where it specifically says which M.2 slots are different from the GPU lanes xD XD sigh.

 

[Tetras]

100% this.
Also, I'm actually someone that bought the new AMD Asus X660x Hero, and I've gone through the manual fully 3/4 times. I still can't find where it specifically says which M.2 slots are different from the GPU lanes xD XD sigh.

For the Gigabyte board they stuck a switch on the primary PCI-E slot and the CPU can operate either the full 16 lanes or 8/8 mode, so if you use 8 lanes for 2 M.2 slots, then it only leaves 8 for the graphics card.

They used the other 8 lanes for 2 more PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots (4 each). That makes the 24 total PCI-E 5.0 from the CPU.

The chipset(s) has no M.2 slots attached, instead the lanes are wired to the second and third PCI-E slots.

For the Asus board, Asus used the 8 spare lanes for 2 PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots and the other 2 M.2 slots come off the chipset(s) and are PCI-E 4.0. There is no penalty to the primary PCI-E for populating all the M.2 slots, but if you use the second PCI-E slot to add an M.2 card then the GPU lanes will be halved.

That's my read of it anyhow, I hope it helps clarify the manual.

 

[Conor Royston]

For the Gigabyte board they stuck a switch on the primary PCI-E slot and the CPU can operate either the full 16 lanes or 8/8 mode, so if you use 8 lanes for 2 M.2 slots, then it only leaves 8 for the graphics card.

They used the other 8 lanes for 2 more PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots (4 each). That makes the 24 total PCI-E 5.0 from the CPU.

The chipset(s) has no M.2 slots attached, instead the lanes are wired to the second and third PCI-E slots.

For the Asus board, Asus used the 8 spare lanes for 2 PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots and the other 2 M.2 slots come off the chipset(s) and are PCI-E 4.0. There is no penalty to the primary PCI-E for populating all the M.2 slots, but if you use the second PCI-E slot to add an M.2 card then the GPU lanes will be halved.

That's my read of it anyhow, I hope it helps clarify the manual.

Literally as you replied, I also found this!

https://imgur.com/1ppLLcS
So I guess any of the two bottom right slots should be completely fine to fill + my GPU ^_^ Until M.2 Gen 5 release!

 

[Stu999]

@Grim5 - sounds like a bit of a ridiculous situation. Not sure why they've made this as complex / not transparent as they have.

 

[g67575]

The B650E Taichi appears to be the only B series board with USB4 (just 1 port):

https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2022/10/ASROCK-B650-SPECS-2_videocardz-768x429.jpg

 

[PeegeeTips]

thank you.

might have to wait for the mid-cycle refresh from motherboard vendors before USB4 becomes common place rather than a niche feature.

 

[VortexA1]

There are two USB 4/Thunderbolt 4 ports, eight SATA 3.0 ports.

ASRock X670E Taichi Carrara

on another: Two are blistering fast 40Gbps USB 4.0 Type-C. A third Type-C is a 20Gbps port.

It says a third type usb c which 20 Gbps = 2.5 GBps.

 

[Richdog]

There are two USB 4/Thunderbolt 4 ports, eight SATA 3.0 ports.

ASRock X670E Taichi Carrara

on another: Two are blistering fast 40Gbps USB 4.0 Type-C. A third Type-C is a 20Gbps port.

It says a third type usb c which 20 Gbps = 2.5 GBps.

The price of that thing is utterly grotesque.

 

[VortexA1]

The price of that thing is utterly grotesque.

There are cheaper ones with two usb 4s(i hope!).

ThunderboltEX 4 - i've seen this it's an add-on internal card that adds two usb 4s.