According to reliable Twitter prognosticator kopite7kimi, next-generation consumer GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards will feature a PCIe 4.0 interface to the motherboard, and not forward-looking PCIe 5.0 present on the professional ‘Hopper‘ range.
This rumour would make sense as consumer cards are less sensitive to interface bandwidth than professional cards, where users typically move around larger amounts of data. Remaining on PCIe 4.0 for RTX 40-series GPUs, codenamed ‘Ada,’ is no great hardship, especially as technologies such as Resizable Bar take some of the load off the GPU’s memory subsystem.
Possible confusion
Nevertheless, there may be some confusion for less-informed users as the next-generation 16-pin power interface, required to drive the increased TGP budget for premium models, has actively been marketed as ‘PCIe 5.0-ready’ by a number of PSU manufacturers, eager to sell high-end units with catchy names and nascent technologies.
Not moving to PCIe 5.0, should this rumour be proved correct, takes some of the shine off Intel’s ‘Alder Lake‘ platform, whose chipsets duly support PCIe 5.0 between graphics card and CPU.
AMD’s next-generation RDNA 3 architecture, designed to go toe-to-toe with Nvidia’s finest later on this year, may be the only PCIe 5.0 GPU devices available to consumers, though it must be noted AMD has not discussed the interface specification, nor any meaningful specifications, at this date.
