NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 4090, AD102 GPU: PCIe 4.0, not PCIe 5.0

NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card will be using the AD102 GPU based on the new Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, but now we are hearing it will NOT be based on PCIe 5.0... but rather PCIe 4.0 instead.

The new NVIDIA Hopper GPU architecture that was revealed in March 2022 has support for the new PCIe 5.0 standard, but the new consumer-focused Ada Lovelace GPUs including the new GeForce RTX 4090, will be using the current PCIe 4.0 standard.

AMD and Intel's new platforms launching this year -- AMD with its "Raphael" Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, and Intel with its 13th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" CPUs -- will be supporting the next-gen PCIe 5.0 standard. Intel already has DDR5 + PCIe 5.0 support on its new flagship Z690-based motherboards, remember.

NVIDIA talked up PCIe 5.0 when it introduced its new Hopper GPU architecture and the new H100 accelerator: "PCIe Gen 5 provides 128 GB/sec total bandwidth (64 GB/sec in each direction) compared to 64 GB/sec total bandwidth (32GB/sec in each direction) in Gen 4 PCIe. PCIe Gen 5 enables H100 to interface with the highest performing x86 CPUs and SmartNICs or data processing units (DPUs)".