The PCIe 4.0 has been in the works since 2011, and today at its current 0.7 specifications, the PCI-SIG have managed to get 300 W of power to the slot without requiring external power for the PCI device. Power isn’t just the breakthrough here, as the PCIe 4.0 at its current state is slated to output 16 GT/s of transfer rate with a 31.5 GB/s speed at x16 mode. That’s twice the performance of the current PCIe 3.0 specifications.
16 GT/s is too much for your average consumer, with the PCIe 4.0 better suited for throughput heavy devices. That’s networking, storage, and generally server grade IO demands. This could in turn still revolutionize the consumer graphics market, but we believe server components will get cozy with PCIe 4.0 first, and wont land on any desktop motherboards anytime soon this year.
| PCIe Version | Line Code | Transfer Rate | x1 Bandwidth | x4 | x8 | x16 |
| 1.0 | 8b/10b | 2.5 GT/s | 250 MB/s | 1 GB/s | 2 GB/s | 4 GB/s |
| 2.0 | 8b/10b | 5 GT/s | 500 MB/s | 2 GB/s | 4 GB/s | 8 GB/s |
| 3.0 | 128b/130b | 8 GT/s | 984.6 MB/s | 3.938 GB/s | 7.877 GB/s | 15.754 GB/s |
| 4.0 | 128b/130b | 16 GT/s | 1.969 GB/s | 7.877 GB/s | 15.754 GB/s | 31.508 GB/s |
Now the AMD board pictured below features the PCIe 4.0 at its 0.7 specifications state, and it’s easy to spot the 8-pin PEG connector. There are actually Two of those located on the board, and Two more 6-pin power connectors in combination to the staple 24-pin and 4+4 pin power connectors that should power up the board and its CPU. We are guessing that these are the auxiliary power for the PCIe slots to make 450 W of continuous power.
The PCIe 4.0 standard is near completion, with PCI-SIG’s eyes set on the PCI-E 5.0 technology.
