"Rocket Lake" Offers 11% Higher PCIe Gen4 NVMe Storage Performance: Intel

[watzupken]

And only if you get an i5 Rocket Lake CPU or better. The i3's and below don't get any PCIe 4.0 support.

Typical Intel behavior. They will charge you for every single added feature. So should not come as a surprise. I think they did the same in the past for some features like Optane support, and to use SSD as a cache. So in this case, even if the PCI-E 4.0 is faster, I don't think many will get to enjoy it.

 

[olymind1]

I can't recollect, but I think PCI-E 4.0 is only available on their Z490/ 590 series board. So I guess most Intel users will still be left out whether its faster or not.

B560 and H570 chipsets is also supporting PCI-E 4.0 for vga and for ssd too.

From Asrock B560 Pro4 description:
11th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors
- 2 x PCI Express x16 Slots (PCIE1/PCIE3: single at Gen4x16 (PCIE1); dual at Gen4x16 (PCIE1) / Gen3x2 (PCIE3))*
- 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_1), supports M Key type 2242/2260/2280 M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen4x4 (64 Gb/s) (Only supported with 11th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors)**

From Asrock H570M Pro4:
11th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors
- 1 x PCI Express 4.0 x16 Slot (PCIE1)*
- 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_1), supports M Key type 2280 M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen4x4 (64 Gb/s) (Only supported with 11th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors) **

So no Z boards are also getting PCI-E 4.0.

 

[InVasMani]

Keep in mind the L1 data cache on these Intel chips is 48KB rather than 32KB on the AMD Ryzen CPU's. It's a important thing to take note of until more revealing data can be verified to see where and how that L1 data cache could come into play in regard to victim cache.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Keep in mind the L1 data cache on these Intel chips is 48KB rather than 32KB on the AMD Ryzen CPU's. It's a important thing to take note of until more revealing data can be verified to see where and how that L1 data cache could come into play in regard to victim cache.

In more good past times was consumer CPU's with 64kb L1 for data and 64 L1 for instructions. If my memories don't lie to me. Of course, among professional processors, there are those with even larger primary caches. Decreasing of caches eat a place for good purely AMD instructions like "3D Now!" Demotivate me

 

[InVasMani]

That's part of why I've been saying utilizing FPGA tech for adaptive instruction sets makes sense for chiplet designs. The primary chiplet can have essential instruction sets and the secondary chiplet can cover less essential instruction sets. To be fair they don't even have to use FPGA's for any of that, but FPGA's could further optimize things by removing more fixed function hardware instruction sets with more programmable instruction sets meaning you could condense some of that space and just let the software swap to a ideal profile for the hardware program itself as.

 

[B-Real]

What? How?

Here you go, pal:

1
2

 

[Vya Domus]

Which latency has matter for game load times from SSD?

Of any kind, the problem with slow loading times on HDDs was the seek time. That isn't an issue with flash storage.

Keep in mind the L1 data cache on these Intel chips is 48KB rather than 32KB on the AMD Ryzen CPU's. It's a important thing to take note of until more revealing data can be verified to see where and how that L1 data cache could come into play in regard to victim cache.

What does that have to do with PCIe storage speeds ?

 

[efikkan]

From long time ago interfaces on Intel motherboards has practical speed more closer to theoretical maximum than implementation of interfaces on AMD motherboards. That maybe is myth or maybe is reality. No words about MB's with what class chipset: budget, middle or high class err...HX10/HX70, BX60 , ZX70/ZX90? No words where is problem if exist problem of AMD. Maybe old internal I/O tech, maybe crap BIOS/Drivers? This is not approved comment just feelings.

Any differences in performance would have to do with the design of the PCIe controller inside the CPU. BIOS and drivers is absolutely not involved in something this low level. BIOS only configures buses, but does not handle the packed data.

By the way the BIOS used on the Intel board is dated 17 February. Intel could have easily used version 3204 on the AMD board, which has been out since the end of January, instead of the pulled BIOS. I am sure they had a good reason to use a buggy version. smh

It's been three and a half months since Zen 3's release, how much longer before we stop hearing "we have to wait for the next BIOS to do a fair comparison…"?

BIOS is relevant for many things, but not for PCIe performance anyway.

most games are optimised for mechanical drives with heavy compression to compensate,

Games like all applications relies on standard library functions to do IO, which are completely agnostic whether the file is loaded from a floppy, an SSD or from RAM cache. So there is no such thing as optimizing for HDDs, unless you are designing a file system or firmware.
Even changing buffer sizes for file loading have little effect on read performance from SSDs, according to my own tests.
So if you see little performance gain in loading times when switching from HDDs to SSDs, it has to do with other overhead in the game engine.

thus they're often CPU limited for load speeds (and sometimes single threaded at that, ugh)

Decompression speed varies between algorithms, but generally speaking a single core should be able to handle several hundred MB/s in many of them.
I'm pretty sure it comes down to just plain bloated code in most cases, but it is testable to some extent, assuming loading times are fairly consistent for a setup. If you see a clear correlation between CPU performance and loading times(let's say you underclock your CPU significantly), then it's the load of the algorithm. On the other hand, if you see little difference between vastly different CPUs and storage mediums, then it's most likely due to software bloat causing cache misses.

In more good past times was consumer CPU's with 64kb L1 for data and 64 L1 for instructions. If my memories don't lie to me. Of course, among professional processors, there are those with even larger primary caches. Decreasing of caches eat a place for good purely AMD instructions like "3D Now!" Demotivate me

There are many aspects of caches which matters; latency, banks, bandwidth etc. Due to ever-changing architectures, cache sizes may go up and down, but performance nearly always improves.

That's part of why I've been saying utilizing FPGA tech for adaptive instruction sets makes sense for chiplet designs. The primary chiplet can have essential instruction sets and the secondary chiplet can cover less essential instruction sets. To be fair they don't even have to use FPGA's for any of that, but FPGA's could further optimize things by removing more fixed function hardware instruction sets with more programmable instruction sets meaning you could condense some of that space and just let the software swap to a ideal profile for the hardware program itself as.

FPGAs are way too slow to be competing with high-performance CPUs, and also too expensive.

I'm all for removing application specific fixed function hardware, but to replace it with more execution ports with more ALUs and vector units, and possibly some more programmability on the CPU-front-end through firmware. This should achieve more or less what you want at a much lower cost.

 

[Why_Me]

Intel 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPU Pre-Orders Open Two Weeks Before Reviews - Full Unveil on 16th March, Sales on 30th March

Intel will be launching its 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPU lineup on 16th of March with pre-orders opening up two weeks prior to sales and reviews.

wccftech.com

 

[Patriot]

most games are optimised for mechanical drives with heavy compression to compensate, thus they're often CPU limited for load speeds (and sometimes single threaded at that, ugh)

Games now are a little more optimised, with DirectStorage and RTX IO coming along to fix the issue next gen

That and Qdepth 1-4 is all most consumer workloads will use till direct storage becomes a thing.
I stayed with Gen3 nvme drives because I transfer enough between drives to enjoy > sata, prices are comparable and... game load times don't change.
Heck, when nvme drives first came out, boot times were longer due to the initialization time completely offsetting the startup advantage and how serial windows boot is.

Buying quality nand that has sustainable performance is far more important to me than setting benchmark records for things I will never see in daily usage.
I can't wait for micron to release some 3dxpoint consumer products at more reasonable price points than optane.
Bring me faster Q1 performance intel, then we talk."

Any differences in performance would have to do with the design of the PCIe controller inside the CPU. BIOS and drivers is absolutely not involved in something this low level. BIOS only configures buses, but does not handle the packed data.

It's been three and a half months since Zen 3's release, how much longer before we stop hearing "we have to wait for the next BIOS to do a fair comparison…"?

BIOS is relevant for many things, but not for PCIe performance anyway.

No need to wait, just have to not use a removed known buggy UEFI that is significantly older than the rom they used on the Intel board.
The pulled rom used and older Agesa. It's like IO die firmware could effect... IO. No, couldn't be the case, you must be right, no reason fraudulent shamed journalist used a pulled rom.

 

[AusWolf]

Thank the heavens! The world desperately needed 11% more storage performance on PCI-e 4.0. Praise Intel, our saviour! *sarcasm*

 

[ADB1979]

I will wait for independent testing to either confirm or deny the validity of this unreleased product, and I will then compare it to AMD's next generation product because that is exactly what Intel is doing right now.

In the mean time, AMD has PCIe Gen 4 and Intel does not, therefore AMD products offer 100% more bandwidth than Intel products.

In more good past times was consumer CPU's with 64kb L1 for data and 64 L1 for instructions. If my memories don't lie to me. Of course, among professional processors, there are those with even larger primary caches.

As far as I understand why is because of the nature of SRAM (cache memory) is that a larger amount increases the latency and is more difficult to clock higher. AMD decided with Ryzen to decrease the L1 but also reduce its latency and not run into a MHz limitation, and to increase the L2 and reduce the latency of the L2, then strap on a massive L3. This was all part of the Zen architecture, and as always trade-offs come into play.

Then of course AMD essentially perfected Zen 1 with the Zen+ refresh which reduced the cache latencies all round even further.

I do not know what AMD plans with the Zen 4 architecture at the low level, right now I am keeping an eye out for the Zen 3+ CPU's, which I am hoping will bring a much faster memory controller like they have on the already shipping "Cezanne" APU architecture.

AMD Cezanne 8 Core Ryzen 5000G 'Zen 3' Desktop APU Tested on B550 Platform, Up To 4.7 GHz Clocks & Great Memory Performance

AMD's Cezanne based Ryzen 5000G Desktop APU has been spotted and tested on the B550 board platform by a Chinese leaker.

wccftech.com

People have since hit 4,800MHz but it was not stable. If AMD can bring 4,266MHz RAM to Zen 3+ CPU's I will buy one and upgrade to a 500 series chipset as I have no plans to buy any DDR-5 system until the 2nd generation once things have been tweaked and RAM prices are sensible (remember that AMD is using the Tick-Tock concept), so I will be looking to get Zen 3+ then Zen 4+, or perhaps even Zen 5, but a lot of this depends on what happens in reality and what happens with the RAM prices.

Interesting in the computer sphere as always

 

[tabascosauz]

People have since hit 4,800MHz but it was not stable. If AMD can bring 4,266MHz RAM to Zen 3+ CPU's I will buy one and upgrade to a 500 series chipset as I have no plans to buy any DDR-5 system until the 2nd generation once things have been tweaked and RAM prices are sensible (remember that AMD is using the Tick-Tock concept), so I will be looking to get Zen 3+ then Zen 4+, or perhaps even Zen 5, but a lot of this depends on what happens in reality and what happens with the RAM prices.

Interesting in the computer sphere as always

There is no such thing as Tick Tock on AMD. They have two different teams leapfrogging each other, so every other release bears some resemblance to the one 2 generations before.

If you mean practical performance, then that's exactly what Renoir already brought to the table. 1:1 at DDR4-4400 should be widely doable for most 6- and 8-core Renoirs, mine does 4400 @ 1.2V. Not to mention that Renoir has the better memory controller - Renoir posts better read/write/copy/latency performance. And when you decouple Infinity Fabric on Renoir, the memory controller can already hit speeds far above the 4800MT/s that you stated. From all indications it doesn't appear that AMD changed anything significant with Cezanne's memory controller, so Cezanne might be to Renoir what Vermeer is to Matisse.

The problem when you want to play in the high memory speed arena is that even with Renoir, you will run into other limits far before you max out the K17.6 memory controller. If you have poorly binned B-die or B-die that is (unfortunately) on an A0 PCB (me), you will run into that first. Even with good B-die, you will run into your limits before 5000MT/s, because B-die isn't really the IC of choice for raw freq. Then assuming you run on a decent 6-layer ATX or 8-layer ITX, you'll start maxing that out in around the 5000MT/s range.

And so it really doesn't depend at all on the memory controller, it's way past that. What's needed is Infinity Fabric to scale to those speeds, and I don't even know if that's doable.

 

[ADB1979]

There is no such thing as Tick Tock on AMD. They have two different teams leapfrogging each other, so every other release bears some resemblance to the one 2 generations before.

That may be the case is some aspects, but the + variants are all tweaks of the previous design, and as everyone knows the Intel Tick Tock model (before it turned into a Tick Tock Tock Tock model and was then abandoned), AMD follows the same basic principle from the end users perspective, and most people have followed suit, whether or not this is "technically correct" or not is moot as this is the common parlance.

amd tick tock at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

The problem when you want to play in the high memory speed arena is that even with Renoir, you will run into other limits far before you max out the K17.6 memory controller. If you have poorly binned B-die or B-die that is (unfortunately) on an A0 PCB (me), you will run into that first. Even with good B-die, you will run into your limits before 5000MT/s, because B-die isn't really the IC of choice for raw freq. Then assuming you run on a decent 6-layer ATX or 8-layer ITX, you'll start maxing that out in around the 5000MT/s range.

And so it really doesn't depend at all on the memory controller, it's way past that. What's needed is Infinity Fabric to scale to those speeds, and I don't even know if that's doable.

Well yes, there are a host of other issues, the motherboard being one of them, but the primary problem is the memory controller, even in Zen 3 CPU's because people are hitting high RAM speeds on the same desktop boards with APU's that they are not hitting with the CPU's, hence why my real hope for Zen 3+ is a better memory controller.

My 3600 will run 4,000MHz RAM, but obviously not at 1:1:1, (my RAM incidentally is capable of 4,266) but after a fair bit of testing and tweaking my RAM is operating as fast as it will go (in real world use) with my 3600 and my X470 motherboard running a 3,400MHz @ 14:14:14 timings.

If AMD's Zen 3+ doesn't support faster RAM, I expect that I will wait for Zen 4, or get a Threadripper 3000 series when they plummet in price, I will wait and see what happens, many options, but going to Intel is almost certainly not one of them.

 

[tabascosauz]

Well yes, there are a host of other issues, the motherboard being one of them, but the primary problem is the memory controller, even in Zen 3 CPU's because people are hitting high RAM speeds on the same desktop boards with APU's that they are not hitting with the CPU's, hence why my real hope for Zen 3+ is a better memory controller.

My 3600 will run 4,000MHz RAM, but obviously not at 1:1:1, my RAM incidentally is capable of 4,266 but after a fair bit of testing, and for my needs I have tweaked my RAM as much as it will go with my 3600 and my motherboard.

If AMD's Zen 3+ doesn't support faster RAM, I expect that I will wait for Zen 4, or get a Threadripper 3000 series when they plummet in price, I will wait and see what happens, many options, but going to Intel is almost certainly not one of them.

I'm still convinced that the reason Renoir achieves better read/write/copy than 2CCD Vermeer is not because of the updated memory controller itself, but rather because the Infinity Fabric links need to constantly go off-die across the substrate. Which, if that is the reason behind the better performance, is a problem that will never go away if chiplets are here to stay.

The inevitable drawback of using chiplets is memory latency and interconnect performance, so as long as AMD sticks to its high core count philosophy and current I/O + 2 CCD design, you can forget about having monolithic APU memory performance ever, even if somehow they drop the APU UMC into the desktop I/O die (unlikely, no reason for them to do so).

Even Matisse's UMC is seriously good enough (arguably was already better than Intel IMC, though kinda apples to oranges) - you just can't leverage its full potential in daily use because Infinity Fabric is a cockblock.

 

[player-x]

Because games don't need to load several GB/s all the time despite what some people might think. What really matters is the latency which is roughly going to be the same between SATA3 and NVMe SSDs.

Your right but also very wrong, both are important, have run 4x 512GB 840 Pro's in R0 on a SAS controller for years, and had comparable results as a PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives.

I have now a Samsung 1TB 980 Pro PM9A1 (OEM version of the 980 Pro), and it gives a huge boost in load times, and a 10% boost would be noticeable.

But as this world shocking news is brought to us by Ryan the Cherry-picker, I take this news with a shovel of salt, and wait till I see trustworthy benchmarks from TPU or any other tech site that I trust.

Which latency has matter for game load times from SSD? I think that random read speed of small(program) files is matter. This is most important parameter.

Uhhh, the speed of ''random read speed'' is mostly depending on latency!

More performance is always welcomed but even if this is true I can't help to just laugh @ Ryan Shrout.

Yeah that guy made him self one hell of a joke. ^_^
But maybe he is doing internally a hell of a job, but somehow doubt that to. LOL

Typical Intel behavior. They will charge you for every single added feature. So should not come as a surprise. I think they did the same in the past for some features like Optane support, and to use SSD as a cache. So in this case, even if the PCI-E 4.0 is faster, I don't think many will get to enjoy it.

Not really just typical Intel behaviour, Apple, Nvidia, John Deere, Big Pharma, when they have the power they all do it, and they go as far is what they can get away with!

Of any kind, the problem with slow loading times on HDDs was the seek time. That isn't an issue with flash storage.

Seek time from SSDs are just as far from HDDs, as SSDs are from dram, Intel has put billions in R&D for XPoint to replace flash.

There is no such thing as Tick Tock on AMD. They have two different teams leapfrogging each other, so every other release bears some resemblance to the one 2 generations before.

Yes you have sort of 3 teams, but they are not leapfrogging each other, it's the same as with building a chemical plant, team 1 is an architect team, team 2 is an engineering team, and team 3 are the workers that lay down the pipes and cables.

- Team 1 is a small group of idea people that does things like fundamental research and think of new concepts, how to make a faster CPU, some of them do fundamental R&D, and some of that work is unknown in which generation it will actually be ready to be used, and others do more practical R&D and have a targeted generation of use.
- Team 2 is a little bigger group that works with team 1, and start how to implement those ideas in to the silicon, and the further they get on, the more people from team 1 leave and start planing and working on the next generation CPU, at the same time the better people from team 3 start laying the main structure working close with team 2.
- Team 3 in the end is making the connections and need less and less input from team 2, at the same time, team 1 is working with people from team 2 that left the current project, and start on the next generation.

Basically depending on their role, people work on differed phases of the project, and when they are done with their part, they go to the next project/generation, usually they are working on 3 to 4 generations at the same time.

 

[ADB1979]

I'm still convinced that the reason Renoir achieves better read/write/copy than 2CCD Vermeer is not because of the updated memory controller itself, but rather because the Infinity Fabric links need to constantly go off-die across the substrate. Which, if that is the reason behind the better performance, is a problem that will never go away if chiplets are here to stay.

You are quite likely correct, and at the very least that is a real part of the issue. There are of course ways round this, or rather to "hide" it, and AMD has already done the obvious ones, a fat L3 cache, tweaking the L1, L2 and L3 cache latencies, and much more, but if the issue is that the Infinity Fabric is not running fast enough, or rather, AMD is not able to make it clock high enough then AMD will have to go wide instead and double the IF lanes, which is setup right could help latency a little as well, but will primarily be there to double the potential bandwidth.

When we hear about the Zen 3+ technical details, we might get a glimpse into some of the updates for Zen 4 as I expect they will be ironing out the kinks and putting to use their updated tech before Zen 4. Also, I fully expect that AMD will be using the same tech (Infinity Fabric assumed) to connect together their chiplet based GPU's that are upcoming, I doubt very much that AMD would use different tech to connect their graphics silicon together than for their CPU silicon, and whichever one is out first will show us what they will do on the other.