Gigabyte were labelled as producing fake PCI-E Gen 3 motherboards a while back Micro Star International as they accused Gigabyte’s motherboards of lacking the required standard of PCI-E Gen 3 switches which allow for Gen 3 to be enabled on the motherboards. However, Gigabyte has produced a presentation which completely invalidates most of MSI’s claim. Gigabyte take the stance that since the first PCI-E 16X Gen 3 lane is controlled directly by the Ivy Bridge processor there no switching circuitry between the CPU’s PCI-E root-complex and the slots. However, in the case of when a dual PCI-E 3.0 set up is used there is a need for a PCI-E 3.0 Gen 3 switch otherwise the slots will not function at PCI-E Gen 3 speeds.
Gigabyte offers 3 different scenarios that its boards use:
The first is when the motherboard runs only a single PCI-E 16X lane and in this case you will get the full PCI-E Gen 3 16X bandwidth directly from the CPU:
The second is with dual Gen 3 16X PCI-E Lanes and with a Gen 3 switch, this shows how you get 16X bandwidth with a single card configuration or 8X/8X with a dual card configuration but note a switch is needed for this.
The third and final scenario is with dual or more PCI-E 16X lanes in which Gen 2 switches are fitted only. However, the claim they make here is that you get PCI-E Gen 3 8X to the first slot when running a single card, but PCI-E Gen 3 8X is equivalent to 16X in Gen 2, so maybe MSI have a point here.
The only thing that now remains unanswered is whether MSI’s other claim is true. which is that Gigabyte’s Capacitors, resistors and BIOS aren’t up to PCI-E Gen 3 standard as MSI pointed out in its previous presentation. Watch this space the fight certainly isn’t over yet.
