UL Benchmarks (formerly Futuremark) has released a new update for its 3DMark flagship benchmark, adding the option to test the capabilities of your PCI Express slot. This lets you see the difference between a PCI Express 2.0, 3.0 and soon, with the release of AMD X570 motherboards, PCIExpress 4.0 slots. This joins a growing collection of non-gaming specific tests that showcase the capabilities of features of certain components.
3DMark has been one of the most important benchmarking tools for hardware enthusiasts and gamers for two decades, every battering graphics cards into submission and pushing cooling to keep up with the heat pushed out by the components thrown against such hefty benchmarks. But in recent years, UL Benchmarks has added additional tests, like physics, like DLSS, like ray tracing, and an API Overhead tests to showcase the difference between DX11, DX12, and Vulkan. The latest is PCI Express testing and it's more of a comparison of slot bandwidth than anything else.
It's not a particularly illuminating benchmark, as simply by the numbers we know that PCI Express 3.0 is double the speed of 2.0, and 4.0 is double the speed of 3.0. No graphics cards utilize the full 3.0 x16 bandwidth at this time, so no GPUs will utilize 4.0 x8 capacity. But it does at least highlight that there is a tonne of additional bandwidth available with PCIE 4.0, which will help usher in new SSDs, as well as offer reduced-lane support for Gigabit+ network cards and other add-in boards.
What do you think PCIE 4.0 will deliver to gamers and hardware fans over the next couple of years?
