MSI X670E Tomahawk WIFI - PCIE 4.0/5.0 scam?

Hi,

I’ve recently started seeing this message pop up before BIOS starts to make a summary of connected drives:

All PCIe slots (CPU) limited to Gen3.

My first impression? This smells like a scam that got caught red-handed only because the GPU and monitor initialized fast enough for me to see this message. Because this message doesn’t flash for too long on the screen before the firmware proceeds to displaying the drive list. MSI advertizes the board has a PCIE 5.0 x16 slot and a PCIE 5.0 x4 M2 slot, but now all a sudden they run 4x slower than what I paid for. If I paid for 5.0 and got 3.0, I should be re-imbursed the difference.

Anyone else experienced this? Is this normal?

I won’t jump at that conclusion. A scam would suggest that a high speed is advertised but always or routinely not available - with full knowledge by and financial benefit to the manufacturer.

There is no reason to believe this is happening. The board is out for a while and the pitchforks would have been out for that duration.

Does this mean you noticed this recently or that you are sure this message did not exist in the beginning?

I’d wager that you’re not really concerned with the PCIe speed during boot time, but more at OS run time.
Did you check your PCIe speeds after boot? What OS are you using?

MSI also posts updated BIOS/UEFI for this board regularly. The most recent version is from 9/24.
What version does your mobo have? Did you consider upgrading to the latest?

I have exactly same board (9950x + 4090) and I dont see this message. It appears under Tomahawk logo?

Also check the bios settings in regards to pci-e link speeds if those are set correctly.

While the PCIe slots should support PCIe 5.0, your CPU also needs to support it.

If you’re running, say, an 8500G or other budget CPU in there, then yes this will happen.

No, it’s a black screen with just that written on it:

Does this mean you noticed this recently

Yes

this message did not exist in the beginning

I don’t know. Like I said/lamented in another thread, POST takes a ridiculous amount of time up to 20 minutes, so every time I have to reboot I just go to the bathroom, and maybe by the time I’m back it’s done. I’ve had to reboot a month ago. This time I had no need to go to the bathroom, so I just patiently waited. 2 days ago I needed to reboot again, and I’ve noticed this message again, which means it’s reproducible in the computer’s current state.

Did you check your PCIe speeds after boot?

Yeah. The first one is 3.0.

$ for i in $(dmidecode --type 9 | grep -i Bus\ Address | awk '{print $3}' | sed 's/^0000://'); do echo ${i}; lspci -s${i} -vv | grep -E 'LnkCap|LnkSta'; done
00:01.1
                LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 8GT/s, Width x16, ASPM not supported
                LnkSta: Speed 8GT/s, Width x4
                LnkCap2: Supported Link Speeds: 2.5-8GT/s, Crosslink- Retimer- 2Retimers- DRS-
                LnkSta2: Current De-emphasis Level: -3.5dB, EqualizationComplete+ EqualizationPhase1+
00:1f.7
00:1f.7
00:02.1
                LnkCap: Port #1, Speed 32GT/s, Width x4, ASPM L1, Exit Latency L1 <32us
                LnkSta: Speed 16GT/s, Width x4
                LnkCap2: Supported Link Speeds: 2.5-32GT/s, Crosslink- Retimer+ 2Retimers+ DRS-
                LnkSta2: Current De-emphasis Level: -3.5dB, EqualizationComplete+ EqualizationPhase1+

What OS are you using?

A normal one :wink:
obraz

What version does your mobo have?

I’m on 1.A0 04/23/2024

Did you consider upgrading to the latest?

No. Maybe later.

Also check the bios settings in regards to pci-e link speeds if those are set correctly.

What? Where? The damn thing has so many settings I could barely disabled unhinged automatic OC and actually downclock.

your CPU also needs to support it

7900