ASUS seems to want to enable PCI Express 4.0 on AMD 400-series boards

Despite AMD's efforts to ensure PCI Express 4.0 doesn't work on older chipsets, some motherboard makers like ASUS are doing their best to bring PCI Express 4.0 support to as many motherboards as possible.

MyDrivers got its hands on a compatibility chart from ASUS that reveals which of the company's AMD 400-series based motherboards currently support PCI Express 4.0. The site benchmarked the TUF B450M Pro Gaming with a BIOS with PCI Express 4.0 support and confirmed the motherboard was able to hit speeds that are impossible with PCI Express 3.0:

To test that PCIe gen 4.0 is actually enabled, MyDrivers used a PCIe gen 4.0 SSD on the M.2 slot that's directly wired to the SoC, on a TUF B450M Pro Gaming. Crystal DiskMark sequential read speeds of the drive are consistent with the same drive tested on an X570 motherboard - with just over 5 GB/s reads. These speeds are impossible on gen 3.0 x4.

AMD is not happy about this and will reportedly try to block this in future AGESA microcode updates.

In a separate article, MyDrivers reports that AMD isn't too happy with ASUS marketing PCIe gen 4.0 support on its 400-series motherboards, and is reportedly trying to block it in updates to the AGESA microcode. Our recommendation - if your updated ASUS 400-series motherboard is running PCIe gen 4.0, don't update its BIOS.

Via: TPU