PCIe 5.0 will soon be used in home computers with the 12th-generation Core.

At the Architecture Day event that has just ended, Intel disclosed a lot of information about ARC discrete graphics card and Alder Lake processors. PCIe 5.0 will soon be used in home computers with the 12th-generation Core. Is buying a PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive now too late?

In fact, PCIe 4.0 SSDs have only become mature recently. From the first generation Phison PS5016 main control solution with 5000MB/s reading speed, to the second generation, whose reading speed generally reaches 7000MB/s, to the recent Innogrit IG5236 and Phison PS5018 solutions that are equipped with 176-layer Micron flash memory, their reading speed finally reaches PCIe 4.0 x4 interface’s upper limit of the practical bandwidth – 7400MB/s. The picture below is the actual speed test of Asgart AN4.

On the other hand, the PCIe 5.0 used in Intel’s 12th-generation Core is very primitive. According to the pictures disclosed on the architecture day, the Alder Lake processor can only provide 16 PCIe 5.0 channels, and the M.2 slot for solid-state drives only, still only can use PCIe 4.0 x4.

Although the mainboard can split these 16 PCIe 5.0 channels to power PCIe 5.0 solid-state drive, such compromised plan is obviously stupid. At present, graphics cards did not have bandwidth pressure under the PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, so it may not be upgraded to PCIe 5.0 x16 soon. If the graphics card is not upgraded to PCIe 5.0, they will have to run on PCIe 4.0 X8 after splitting the CPU channel, which will affect the performance of high-end gaming graphics cards. If I may ask, how many gamers are willing to sacrifice graphics performance in exchange for faster SSDs?

PCIe 4.0 was implanted on the 11th-generation Core platform for the first time by Intel, but the PCIe Payload Size can only support up to 256 bytes, therefore the reading speed of the SSD is limited to 7.1GB/s, and cannot reach 7.4GB/s like the AMD platform. The 12th generation Core Intel struggled to achieve PCIe 5.0 earlier than AMD, but unfortunately, the technology is still quite raw: the PCIe 5.0 on the 12th generation Core is still only theoretically available, its actual state is not perfect. So, there is still room for the 13th generation Core to improve.

If you want to fully explore the advantages of PCIe 5.0, the 12th generation Core platform is obviously not enough, AMD is not enough too, and the upcoming Ryzen 6000 and the next-generation Ryzen 7000 cannot support PCIe 5.0. According to Storage Geeks, PCIe 5.0 solid-state drives may not be widely used for at least a year. So, if you want to buy PCIe 4.0 SSDs, don’t worry, your choice will not be outdated in short time.