AMD's 600-Series Chipsets Pass PCIe 4.0 Validation

News
By
last updated

More details about AMD's 600-series chipsets emerge.

AM5 Socket
AM5 Socket (Image credit: AMD)

When AMD teased its upcoming Ryzen 7000 (Raphael) processors for the AM5 socket, the chipmaker indicated that the Zen 4 chips support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 interfaces. However, AMD did not say whether PCIe 5.0 will be supported only by the upcoming CPUs or by both processors and AMD's 600-series chipsets. So, for now, it looks like PCIe Gen5 is reserved only for CPUs.

This week it transpired that PCI-SIG had validated the interoperability of AMD's 600-series AM5 chipsets with PCIe 4.0 x4 devices at a 16 GT/s data transfer rate, which may indicate that the company's next-generation core logic does not support PCIe 5.0. Considering that ASMedia designs AMD-branded chipsets, it will not be shocking that the development is somewhat out of sync with AMD processors since the two companies use different interface IPs.

PCIe 5.0-supporting chips validated by PCI-SIG are Intel's Alder Lake and Sapphire Rapids processors, Intel's FPGA, Phison's PCIe 5.0 redriver, and Samsung SSD controller's 1743 SSD, and various IP modules by Broadcom, Cadence, and Synopsys. Unfortunately, there are not so many PCIe Gen5-supporting devices on the market right now. For AMD, a more pressing issue is to validate its upcoming desktop platforms with PCIe Gen4 devices because it is a more widespread technology and AMD needs this certificate to meet the requirements of PC OEMs.

Alternatively, the lack of PCIe Gen5 validated interoperability may mean that AMD's 600-series chipsets cannot handle PCIe 5.0 in their current form, which is why AMD/ASMedia will need to build another silicon revision free of specific bugs or limitations.

One thing to note about PCIe 5.0 is that it is incredibly complicated to support 32 GT/s data transfer speeds. It is possible to use redrivers to ensure signal integrity over long distances in servers. Still, it will be prohibitively expensive with desktops, so ensuring ideal PCIe 5.0 implementation by chipsets is crucially important. If AMD's 600-series chipsets indeed have specific issues with PCIe Gen5, it may not make sense to enable this technology at all. After all, AMD's AM5 processors will support PCIe Gen5 anyway.

See more CPUs News
Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Ok, 600 series chipsets have been validated for PCIe 4.0. Do we know if PCIe 5.0 validation is pending?
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    However, AMD did not say whether PCIe 5.0 will be supported only by the upcoming CPUs or by both processors and AMD's 600-series chipsets. So, for now, it looks like PCIe Gen5 is reserved only for CPUs.
    AMD did promise PCIe 5.0 at pretty much every level, with X670E being "Everywhere"


    If boards ship with only PCIe 4.0 from the chipset at the start, I'm going to bust out the popcorn and enjoy the show.

    EDIT: Looking at other places, this slide seems rather confusing at first glance. Apparently this is only talking about the CPU PCIe lane availability. Not from the chipset itself.
    Reply
  • wifiburger
    where are all these pcie5 devices that require mobo to have PCIE5 "everywhere" ?
    Reply
  • LuxZg
    I do still wonder, why AMD hasn't yet shown any specs for chipsets. We don't know which PCIe gen nor number of lanes coming off chipset. All we kniw is 24 (28) lanes from CPUs.

    I don't really need chipset to offer PCIe 5.0, but not knowing anything feels weird
    Reply
  • mdd1963
    Presumably, next month they will be certified/validated for PCI-e 3.0 speeds as well? :)
    Reply
  • hannibal
    LuxZg said:
    I do still wonder, why AMD hasn't yet shown any specs for chipsets. We don't know which PCIe gen nor number of lanes coming off chipset. All we kniw is 24 (28) lanes from CPUs.

    I don't really need chipset to offer PCIe 5.0, but not knowing anything feels weird

    These will be released at the Autumn so no wonder they are still tinkering with the whole system. Most likely we will see more info at the end of the summer and full info week before release.
    Reply
  • jp7189
    hotaru.hino said:
    AMD did promise PCIe 5.0 at pretty much every level, with X670E being "Everywhere"


    If boards ship with only PCIe 4.0 from the chipset at the start, I'm going to bust out the popcorn and enjoy the show.

    EDIT: Looking at other places, this slide seems rather confusing at first glance. Apparently this is only talking about the CPU PCIe lane availability. Not from the chipset itself.
    I'm confused. Originally I thought x670 was going to be a single chipset and x670e was going to be a pair where thr 2nd chip would act as a retimer to bring higher speeds to slots further down the board. Then MSI's 670e board shot surfaced which showed dual chips side by side not north and south.

    AMD's recent presentation at computex seemed to indicate b650 would be a single and 670 and 670e would use dual chipsets, but all would be based off the same chip. That left me wondering what the difference is between 670 and 670e.
    Reply
  • LuxZg
    So many questions... This was really a huge teaser. At least summer will seem a bit longer while waiting for final specs and info :)
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    hotaru.hino said:
    AMD did promise PCIe 5.0 at pretty much every level, with X670E being "Everywhere"

    Why do we need two chipsets to have pcie5 everywhere? And why is the regular x670 gimped with m2 pcie5 only depending on the manufacturer? Something fishy is going on here.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    jp7189 said:
    I'm confused. Originally I thought x670 was going to be a single chipset and x670e was going to be a pair where thr 2nd chip would act as a retimer to bring higher speeds to slots further down the board. Then MSI's 670e board shot surfaced which showed dual chips side by side not north and south.

    AMD's recent presentation at computex seemed to indicate b650 would be a single and 670 and 670e would use dual chipsets, but all would be based off the same chip. That left me wondering what the difference is between 670 and 670e.

    670E is just version of 670 that has higher requirement numbers. So 670 does not have to push as hard as 670E in speck wise, so it is cheaper to produce even if it use same chipsets. E version... more IO, better voltage regulation etc. aka everything else in the motherboard that support the chipset.
    Reply