Intel 600 series chipsets will not support PCIe Gen5

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Earlier news came out that AMD only supports PCIe Gen4 on the Zen 4 architecture processor codenamed Raphael. According to other sources, Intel will support PCIe Gen5 and DDR5 memory on Alder Lake-S, which will be launched at the end of this year. This time on consumer platforms, Intel will take the lead in PCIe standards.

Intel 600 chipsets PCle

According to HardwareTimes, it was found through PCI-SIG certification that Intel’s next-generation 600 series chipsets do not seem to support PCIe Gen5, and only have four PCIe Gen4 channels. This does not mean that Alder Lake-S does not support PCIe Gen5. It is more likely to be implemented through a processor pass-through method, similar to the way to implement PCIe Gen4 on a B550 motherboard with Zen 2 and Zen 3 architecture processors. On the other hand, it also means that Intel is likely to give up support for PCIe Gen5 on some low-end models or SoCs.

The reason why Intel did this is probably because of cost considerations. After all, PCIe Gen4 can also meet the needs at this stage. Even PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs with high bandwidth requirements rarely reach saturation. If the chipset uniformly supports the new standard, these motherboards are likely to require higher quality materials, which will eventually lead to a substantial price increase. Providing support for PCIe Gen5 only on the processor is obviously cheaper and simpler than building a unified standard for the entire motherboard.

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