This is related to my previous question about AM5. Turns out 2 8x lane GPUs on AM5 might be an option after all.
So my question: Does a 16x lane PCIe GPU always support x8 lanes as well? (Like a Radeon RX 7900 XTX or something bigger and better from the future.)
Ah, I think I have a better understanding of the PCIe hardware protocol now. Feel a bit more confident regard a 2 x8 setup. Thanks.
Just for the record: my understanding is that the HW protocol performs a handshake which settles the number of lanes that will be used when establishing a link. And the PCIe standard is always backwards compatible, so things should work just fine even if I buy something that says PCIe 6.0 later. Or at least the lower layers of the protocol should be compatible. And as long bandwidth isn’t an issue.
The version is no issue for compatibility, correct. The only effect it may have is bottlenecking. PCIe is a very ‘dumb’ protocol: it doesn’t affect any kind of features because the feature set is all handled in either the chipset or the expansion card. The only thing that ever gets an upgrade in PCIe standards is the bandwidth and all kinds of stability improvements that you really won’t notice unless you are a power user.
If you want, you can put Nvidia’s new 5090 in a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and it’ll function properly. You can also put a PCIe 4.0 SSD in a PCIe 6.0 slot and it’ll work fine. Really the only thing you have to worry about is whether the lanes provide enough bandwidth for the expansion card to use all of its power.