IT TOOK ITS MERRY TIME. But with the latest 12th Gen Alder Lake CPU family, Intel can finally support PCle Express Gen 4 on the desktop. Better 18 months later than AMD and its PCIe 4.0-capable Ryzen 3000 CPUs than never, huh?
Whatever. You now have free reign to build a PC based on a platform from either of the core hardware vendors without worrying about interconnect spec. As for why PCle 4.0 matters, as ever, it comes down to speed. If you want the fastest connection speed for peripherals, you need PCIe Gen 4. And if there's a single component that benefits most from more PCIe bandwidth, it's storage.
Gen 4 doubles theoretical bandwidth over Gen 3 to fully 8GB/s in both directions. Thanks to AMD's early move in the Gen 4 space, there are already a wealth of PCI Express Gen 4 drives to choose from and several get remarkably close to the full capability of the interconnect.
What's more, SSDs have avoided the debilitating price rises suffered by some PC components over the past year or two. Now, you not only get more speed but also more storage for less money. By CPU and GPU standards, a multi-TB SSD is positively affordable. None of which means, however, that all Gen 4 drives are equal. So, it's time to find out how six of the very best perform.
Crucial P5 Plus 1TB
JUST NINE DOLLARS. That's how much extra you currently have to pay for the Crucial P5 Plus 1TB with PCle Gen 4 capability over the older Crucial P5 Gen 3 drive. The plain old P5, should we need to remind you, returns barely more than half the performance by several measures. Even if you don't have a Gen 4 capable rig right now, it surely makes sense to go with the Gen 4 drive and future-proof your storage for any possible CPU and motherboard upgrade.
Denne historien er fra May 2022-utgaven av Maximum PC.
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Denne historien er fra May 2022-utgaven av Maximum PC.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
NZXT C1500 Platinum
Top-tier performance and efficiency
Nvidia DLSS vs AMD FSR
Which AI upscaling technique has the edge?
World of Goo 2
Goo-d enough for two
BenQ X300G 4K Short Throw Projector
Priced high, yet punchy
Hyte Thicc Q60
Almost more mobile phone than CPU cooler
Remove stalkerware from your PC
ACCORDING TO KASPERSKY’S LATEST ‘State of Stalkerware’ report, over 40 percent of those surveyed worldwide said they’d experienced stalking or suspected that they were being stalked.
BUILD AN IT SUPPORT HUB
Discover how to use RustDesk to provide remote assistance and control your own devices remotely with Nick Peers
AMD's turn to drop the ball?
WITH INTEL'S RAPTOR LAKE CPUs falling over, the company firing around 15,000 employees, and cancelling its 2024 innovation event, AMD must have been enjoying the view - until its new Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs rolled out. So, is AMD's CPU a minor stumble or game-changing fumble?
Intel issues fix for Raptor Lake degradation
EARLIER THIS YEAR, I wrote about difficulties I was having with a Core 19-13900K processor (see MPC230 Tech Talk). Little did we realize that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. While most complaints have involved the unlocked Core i9 Raptor Lake CPUs, it appears the instability problems build up and potentially impact many Raptor Lake-13th and 14th Gen Core CPUs, with Intel identifying 22 different desktop parts.
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
The new Zen 5 CPUs are here—time to benchmark!