I'm upset because of the recent actions by Intel.
I'm upset because of the recent actions by Intel.
Hey everyone, I wanted to share what I experienced with Intel Gen 11 processors and my recent PC build. I've been a long-time Intel enthusiast, especially since I work with predictive modeling and AI as a data scientist. When PCIe 4.0 tech became available, I got curious because it opens up possibilities for NVMe 4.0 and RTX IO features that developers can actually utilize. Intel's latest Gen 11 line claims support for PCIe 4.0, but that's not true. The i9 Gen 11 doesn't actually support PCIe 4.0, and Intel's PCIE4 implementation still relies on PCIe 3 lanes. Even with an NVMe 4.0 drive, you'll be stuck at PCIe 3 speeds, and RTX IO probably won't function with the current chipset. I invested a lot in a motherboard and processor, plus two NVMe 4.0 drives for this setup. It's frustrating that Intel misled consumers about such advanced capabilities. I'm switching to AMD now and won't wait months for the right parts. This isn't acceptable. I found another article recently discussing PCIe 4.0 compatibility on Intel chipsets [link]. Also, my main reason for choosing Intel was their leadership in data science tech, but they're now two generations behind AMD's Gen 11. Edit: I've updated with some system details. My setup uses an ASUS Z590-E motherboard with two PCIe 4.0 slots for NVMe, two x4 NVMe Sabrent rocket drives (1TB each), and two 1TB Samsung SSDs. I'm trying to measure the performance of the first drive detected by my BIOS, but it's having trouble running smoothly in my OS.
I shared a link in the post to articles talking about this. Here's a direct quote from the article "While many pieces of the Rocket Lake puzzle are now running at PCI-Express 4.0, the chipset still puts out Gen 3 lanes, which means you're limited to one PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD; the other slots support Gen 3 only. Praise also goes out to Intel for letting us use faster memory not only on Z590, but also on lesser chipsets, which are often good enough and have motherboards that are priced much more reasonably." As far as getting my 2 NVME 4.0 drives setup. I can only detect one of 2 of them even though my motherboard supports 2 PCIE 4.0 slots. I'm trying to stress test the PCIE 4.0 drives now to get speed results but having issues actually running my stress test. Ill post speed results as soon as I get them, I can't find the original source that had speed test results. I'm also using 2 SABRENT Rocket NVMe 4.0 SSD's and 2 samsung SSD 980's. The Samsung SSD's are working fine, but i've been having issues with my PCIE 4.0 drives since I installed my OS. I'm also waiting on approval for nvidia's developer program so that I can test out whether RTX IO works on Intel i9 gen11
Intel's 11th generation offers PCI-e 4.0 via the initial NVMe port, according to the techpowerup piece. It seems not ideal if you require PCI-e 4.0 plus multiple NVMe drives for heavy data transfers, especially when contrasted with AMD's X570 platform. However, a 11900K might be a poor choice overall due to fewer cores than the 10850K and its performance relative to the Ryzen 3rd generation. Intel likely could have improved with their 11th gen, but it mainly serves as a temporary solution until the 12th generation arrives.
I saw that the initial NVME slot was still working at PCIE-3 speeds. I'm attempting to verify this myself. I'm really confused about this, I truly don't want to replace my board if it's actually compatible. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what I'm reading. It seems odd that the z590-e can handle two PCIe 4 slots for NVMe drives while my Intel processor only supports one. Why include a second NVMe 4.0 port on the motherboard?
Intel largely bypassed PCIe 4.0, as their design hasn't evolved much since 2015, making it hard to integrate. The 11th generation was mainly a reaction to AMD, so PCIe 4.0 felt like an afterthought rather than a carefully planned feature. The 12th generation, being a fresh release, is expected to bring PCIe 5.0, which seems like a poor timing for upgrading.
I was considering two options: returning my hardware and getting AMD support for Gen 4, or waiting until August to get the board and processor before selling my gear and upgrading. I’m not familiar with PCIE 5 yet, so it’s new information for me.
You were correct, I was attempting to use two 2x4 SSDs with an X4 GPU. I obtained a second PCIe 4 SSD because I believed it would work, based on the Intel chip's support for PCIe 4 and the fact that the Z590-E board had two PCIe 4 slots for SSDs. I should have conducted more research on Gen 11 PCIe 4 support before purchasing an additional SSD.
PCIe 5.0 standards have been around for a while, yet they consistently outpace production capabilities. PCIe 6.0 development is underway and should be standardized within the next couple of years. In reality, PCIe 5.0 offers minimal value beyond expanding input/output options. Graphics cards are only beginning to utilize PCIe 3.0 x16, and while some PCIe 5.0 storage solutions are being revealed, leveraging PCIe 4.0 performance remains limited. Nonetheless, supporting PCIe 5.0 ensures compatibility with any PCIe 4.0 devices you have.
I really focus on PCIE 4.0 because of NVidia RTX IO. In data science, we rely on the GPU to train predictive models. The bottleneck we face is moving data from DRAM to VRAM. The concept of copying directly from an NVME 4.0 drive to a graphics card seems really forward-thinking. I don’t mind the SSD speeds as long as I can leverage RTX IO technology.