Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but the manual is out and I’ll be damned if I don’t understand how they are doing this in comparison to the other TRX50 specs.
The manual indicates that:
All four PCI-E x16 slots are 5.0. That’s 64 total lanes, plus 3 5.0 NVMes and 2 10Gbe, etc. etc.
In other words, unless I’m counting way the hell wrong, vs. AMD’s ratings on the TRX50 chipset plus processor I can’t figure out how they are getting so many PCI-E lanes on a TRX50 board. It’s almost like halfway between a TRX50 and a WRX90.
They could be using some sort of bridging device, but they don’t indicate it. I am very interested when this board pops up to see reviews that go through this.
I’m not seeing any discrepancy. TRX50 and non-pro threadripper gives 80 PCIe lanes connected to the CPU and the board isn’t even using all 80 when paired with a non-pro threadripper.
The only quirks I’m seeing are that using a non-pro threadripper makes you lose functionality of one of the m.2 slots and downgrades some of the slots from PCIe 5.0 to 4.0.
EDIT:
Actually maybe there is some weirdness with the board, according to the manual it supports 8 channel memory and not 4 channel 2DPC like I assumed. This makes it sound like a WRX90 motherboard.
Correct. Here is where I am getting the discrepancy:
4*16=64
2 10Gbe = 2
4 NVME = 16
2 USB 40 = 2
SATA = 1
I’d have to go back through my original count but I came up to 92. That’s possible if there is switching “this goes off if in use here” but that isn’t in the manual. What is interesting is that the last slot goes to PCI-E 4.0 x16 instead of 5.0 if non-pro. I haven’t seen that in another board, and am interested in how they pull that feat off.
The design itself is generally pretty interesting; the AI add-on just nonsense naming, but I do like the concept/design of this board and am very interested in seeing it reviewed somewhere
Your 92 count would checkout since we know that 1 of the m.2 drives is completely disabled when using non-pro threadripper putting it at 88 lanes total, which is the maximum for TRX50+nonpro threadripper motherboards if you include all chipset connected devices (80 CPU+8 chipset).
It doesn’t seem like there are any switches being used, just extra lanes if using the more full featured pro threadrippers.
I’m also a fan of the actual design of the gimmickily named “AI TOP” stuff. Gigabyte have a blower 4070 ti super under the brand that actually looks good.
Ah, I was not seeing the disabled NVME when all in use. That’s a good catch. Thanks. The way they are utilizing the lanes here is something that seems more efficient then some other boards. I very much like the dual 10Gbe. Reviews may sell me on this one for my purpose.
i’m actually considering this board ATM. From what I understand, you use the Non-Pro Threadripper, only 4 of the DIMM slots are available, and the 4th PCIe and 4th M.2 slots get downgraded to Gen4. However, when you pop the Pro, you get all 8 DIMMs, and everything goes Gen5. This seems like a great way to start small with a regular threadripper and upgrade to the PRO Threadripper 3 or 4 years down the line. Of course, you will lose out on many PCIe lanes over the WRX90 boards, but it’s not as painful as with the ASUS or ASRock TRX50s, where you don’t get your 8 DIMMS if you upgrade to the Pro Threadripper. It would be nice to see some testing or a review of this board @wendell.
Thanks wendell. There is something about this board that really caught my eye, and I think Shadowbane nails it. It’s a really unique option in comparison to the Asus/Asrock in the differences it pulls off and the feature set is especially rich IMHO… one difference they seem to have made in this manual is that now they list all NVMEs as PCI-E 4.0 on the non-Pro threadripper CPUs. Before on a prior manual it listed it as though one of the NVMEs was 5.0 I believe…
I compared the manual that is now at the link to the one I had downloaded before, they are definitely indicating now M.2 at PCI-E 4.0 whereas before it indicated PCI-E 5.0 even with regular Threadripper. This seems… pointless as I can easily populate a PCI-E 5.0 slot with an Asus 5.0 X4 bifrucated card which is what I’m almost guaranteed to do…
@wendell can you give me a yes/no on this? No pressure either way, but I’m going to evaluate returning it if you’re not interested.
My goal with this board was to use it with my 7960X with 4x64GB until DDR5 is cheap enough that I can populate the rest of the slots. If I can’t use all 8 with TRX50, I want to put the $ in a piggy bank for 128GB modules.
I would bet only 4 slots work with a non-PRO threadripper. This is how I interpret the manual but they’re not super clear
I’m not sure if there are any 2 dimm per channel threadripper boards at all? If not, perhaps the pin layout of the socket / IMC doesn’t even support it. And even if you can, it might reduce speed too (perhaps not the same as on desktop platforms since it’s RDIMMS)
You could ask gigabyte support of course to be sure.
This may be a crazed paper launch because I can’t find it anywhere. If it were to ever hit the market I would have interest but it doesn’t appear likely