PCIE is a high-speed serial bus interface used to connect the motherboard and external devices, such as graphics cards, solid-state drives, etc. The higher the version of PCIE, the faster its bandwidth and speed, providing better performance and compatibility.
There are two main PCIE versions on the market, namely PCIE3.0 and PCIE4.0. So, what's the difference?
The rate of PCIE3.0 is 8GT/s, while the rate of PCIE4.0 is 16GT/s. In other words, the single-channel speed of PCIE4.0 is twice that of PCIE3.0. If both use the same number of lanes, the bandwidth of PCIE4.0 is twice that of PCIE3.0.
For example, if 16 channels (i.e. x16) are used, then the bandwidth of PCIE3.0 is 8GT/s x 16 / 8 = 16GB/s, and the bandwidth of PCIE4.0 is 16GT/s x 16 / 8 = 32GB/s.
Advantages and disadvantages of PCIE3.0 and PCIE4.0:
PCIE3.0
Advantages: low cost, good compatibility, meets the needs of most users
Disadvantages: Relatively low performance, unable to support the latest devices
PCIE4.0
Advantages: high performance, support for the latest equipment, great potential for future development
Disadvantages: high cost, poor compatibility, relatively low demand
Different PCIE versions are suitable for different application scenarios. Generally speaking, PCIe3.0 can already meet the data transmission needs of most users. Whether it is daily work or playing games, PCIe3.0 can easily handle it.
And high-speed and stable large-capacity solid-state drives like PCIe4.0. It is more suitable for professional design and editing people, who have greater needs for file transcoding, image rendering, and video editing.
At the same time, PCIe4.0 can also support the latest graphics cards and motherboards, preparing for future technological development.
Taking Sam-sung's solid-state drive as an example, the reading and writing speed of Sam-sung 980 PCIe3.0 NVMe SSD is between 3000MB/s~3500MB/s.
Sam-sung 980 Pro PCIe4.0 NVMe SSD read and write speeds range from 5100MB/s to 7000MB/s. It is also backward compatible with PCIe3.0, ensuring wider use.
Compared with PCIe3.0, PCIe4.0 has nearly twice the read and write speed, which is enough to show how powerful the performance improvement is!
