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AMD's been adding more PCIe lanes across their hardware lineup than Intel has to be sure, but EPYC is server-class stuff with 64 cores to a chip. The Ryzen 2 27

AMD's been adding more PCIe lanes across their hardware lineup than Intel has to be sure, but EPYC is server-class stuff with 64 cores to a chip. The Ryzen 2 2700X only has 20 lanes for 8 cores.

_jal 8y ago
I don't watch this as closely as a lot of people, but my impression is that Intel has been rationing lanes as one way to segment their market, and AMD noticed they can easily mess with that strategy. I spent significantly more for the CPU on a personal build a few years ago because I needed 40 lanes instead of 24. I'm all for AMD messing with it.
- eropple 8y ago
  Agreed. I do live video and a factor in going with Ryzen (a 1500X for now, a 3700X when that drops) was more PCIe lanes for more hardware. That, and the eye-popping multithreaded performance for encoding.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Intel segments the market across every single facet they can find and that won't outright keep people from buying their stuff. Hyperthreading, ECC memory (I ranted about how insane this is before, on numerous occasions), I/O options, GPU options, cache size, TDP, network and of course socket compatibility (where Intel figured out that not only can they sell you a new CPU with 0-5 % more performance every two years, but that they can also make you buy a new board to go with that just by adding or removing a couple ground pins). And Intel got away with it because they had no competition. Monopolies are always very, very bad for consumers.
tlamponi 8y ago
I mean more would be certainly great, but with 20 you can at least run a x16 GPU and a x4 NVMe SSD, which is for my personal setup perfectly OK, I cannot do that with 16 lanes.
- kllrnohj 8y ago
  The chipset just multiplexes and it's fine. You're unlikely to actually use more than 16 lanes simultaneously in such a setup. But yes, Intel is being overly stingy with PCI-E lanes off of the CPU and leaning heavily on the chipset to compensate. I'm hoping Ryzen 3rd gen bumps the lane count a bit more, otherwise Threadripper's 64 lanes look mighty nice...
  - velox_io 8y ago
    The new Ryzens are meant to launch with PCIe 4.0 (this summer, I'm due an upgrade!), so effectively... I'm surprised they don't come with more, especially many of the current ones come with 2-3 x16 slots, AND 2-3 M2s.. Both Intel and AMD have been adding more cores recently. Plus, if you're doing any GPU-based rendering, they're going to simultaneously move data back and forth from NVMe to the GPU's memory. But it grabs a headline and most synthetic benchmarks will only test RAM, graphics and storage in isolation - sneaky!
    - kllrnohj 8y ago
      > Plus, if you're doing any GPU-based rendering, they're going to simultaneously move data back and forth from NVMe to the GPU's memory. Games definitely don't do this at all, which is the primary market for a discreet GPU in these consumer platforms. When they do stream in assets they do so slowly & in a controlled, rationed amount to minimize impact on FPS. They are far from being PCI-E bandwidth limited. That's kind of why you see almost no FPS drop at all when restricting GPUs to x8 bandwidth, even. If you're doing something more workstation-y or custom, that'd be when AMD & Intel would point you at the HEDT platforms which have more than 16-20 lanes.
      - floatboth 8y ago
        Are there any I/O heavy GPU workloads? Mining famously works with just one lane, offline rendering (e.g. Blender Cycles) I think also just uploads the whole scene once and then bounces the rays around…

AMD's been adding more PCIe lanes across their hardware lineup than Intel has to be sure, but EPYC is server-class stuff with 64 cores to a chip. The Ryzen 2 2700X only has 20 lanes for 8 cores.

_jal 8y ago

I don't watch this as closely as a lot of people, but my impression is that Intel has been rationing lanes as one way to segment their market, and AMD noticed they can easily mess with that strategy. I spent significantly more for the CPU on a personal build a few years ago because I needed 40 lanes instead of 24. I'm all for AMD messing with it.

eropple 8y ago
Agreed. I do live video and a factor in going with Ryzen (a 1500X for now, a 3700X when that drops) was more PCIe lanes for more hardware. That, and the eye-popping multithreaded performance for encoding.
blattimwind 8y ago
Intel segments the market across every single facet they can find and that won't outright keep people from buying their stuff. Hyperthreading, ECC memory (I ranted about how insane this is before, on numerous occasions), I/O options, GPU options, cache size, TDP, network and of course socket compatibility (where Intel figured out that not only can they sell you a new CPU with 0-5 % more performance every two years, but that they can also make you buy a new board to go with that just by adding or removing a couple ground pins). And Intel got away with it because they had no competition. Monopolies are always very, very bad for consumers.

tlamponi 8y ago

I mean more would be certainly great, but with 20 you can at least run a x16 GPU and a x4 NVMe SSD, which is for my personal setup perfectly OK, I cannot do that with 16 lanes.

kllrnohj 8y ago
The chipset just multiplexes and it's fine. You're unlikely to actually use more than 16 lanes simultaneously in such a setup. But yes, Intel is being overly stingy with PCI-E lanes off of the CPU and leaning heavily on the chipset to compensate. I'm hoping Ryzen 3rd gen bumps the lane count a bit more, otherwise Threadripper's 64 lanes look mighty nice...
- velox_io 8y ago
  The new Ryzens are meant to launch with PCIe 4.0 (this summer, I'm due an upgrade!), so effectively... I'm surprised they don't come with more, especially many of the current ones come with 2-3 x16 slots, AND 2-3 M2s.. Both Intel and AMD have been adding more cores recently. Plus, if you're doing any GPU-based rendering, they're going to simultaneously move data back and forth from NVMe to the GPU's memory. But it grabs a headline and most synthetic benchmarks will only test RAM, graphics and storage in isolation - sneaky!
  - kllrnohj 8y ago
    > Plus, if you're doing any GPU-based rendering, they're going to simultaneously move data back and forth from NVMe to the GPU's memory. Games definitely don't do this at all, which is the primary market for a discreet GPU in these consumer platforms. When they do stream in assets they do so slowly & in a controlled, rationed amount to minimize impact on FPS. They are far from being PCI-E bandwidth limited. That's kind of why you see almost no FPS drop at all when restricting GPUs to x8 bandwidth, even. If you're doing something more workstation-y or custom, that'd be when AMD & Intel would point you at the HEDT platforms which have more than 16-20 lanes.
    - floatboth 8y ago
      Are there any I/O heavy GPU workloads? Mining famously works with just one lane, offline rendering (e.g. Blender Cycles) I think also just uploads the whole scene once and then bounces the rays around…