After AMD’s jump to PCIe Gen 4 storage last year with their Ryzen 3000 series desktop chips, Intel looks to be following suit as leaked benchmarks show the 11th gen Intel Rocket Lake S running a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD. The benchmark was spotted on the SiSoft Sandra database.
Spotted by TUM_APISAK on Twitter, the SiSoft Sandra benchmark shows an Intel Rocket Lake S compatible motherboard with an unnamed 1TB NVMe SSD rated to PCIe 4.0 x4 speed. The leaked benchmark showed the Intel Rocket Lake-S posting a bandwidth of up to 1.2 GB/s and Input/output speeds of 45,000 IOPS.
Intel RocketLake S UDIMM 4L ERB
PCIe SSD (1TB, PCIe4x4/NVMe, SED) (NTFS, 4kB)https://t.co/WeWTisoi4m
— APISAK (@TUM_APISAK) July 29, 2020
In Intel’s current lineup of products, there are very few platforms currently supporting the PCIe Gen 4 speeds. 10th Gen Core “Ice Lake-U” and “Ice Lake-Y” mobile processors supporting it so far on the consumer side. The upcoming 11th Gen “Tiger Lake” mobile processors will support it also. Intel’s HEDT product line, currently led by “Cascade Lake-X,” as well as the server-side of things, let by “Cooper Lake,” are still limited to PCIe gen 3.0.
There is info about the motherboard or the brand of SSD which was used in the test. However, it will most probably be a Z490 series motherboard as it comes ready with PCIe 4.0 support. But the current 10th generation processors do not support the higher speeds so it is most likely that 11th gen chips will work on the Z490 series motherboards.
The main difference between PCIe gen 3.0 and PCIe gen 4.0 is bandwidth. PCIe gen 3.0 has a max theoretical bandwidth of 32 GB/s while the newer PCIe Gen 4.0 will double it to 64 GB/s. Intel’s Rocket Lake-S desktop CPU platform is expected to feature support on LGA 1200 socket which will make its debut with Comet Lake-S CPUs. They will also feature the new Xe Graphics architecture and increased DDR4 speeds. With the PCIe Gen 4.0 support also added, we will have to see what Intel has in store with its competition against AMD.
What do you think about the leaked benchmarks showing Intel 11th Gen Running A PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD? Let us know in the comments section below.
