Why graphics cards haven’t even reached PCIe 5.0 specs yet

A question was asked recently surrounding the fact that graphics cards seem to be “stuck” with PCIe 4.0 and not moving along toward PCIe 5.0. PCIe 4.0 was introduced to the world in 2017, which makes it quite a few years of age when it comes to the evolution of computers. When normally, everything tends to move ahead every 2-4 years, leaving everything else behind.

So why is it that even the most powerful video card on the market right now, the NVIDIA RTX 4090, still makes use of PCIe 4.0 and not 5.0? PCIe 5.0 was released in 2019, and the 40-series RTX cards launched in 2022, so it would only make sense that would move forward, right?

The answer may surprise you and make total sense all at the same time. Simply put, the GPU industry hasn’t caught up to PCIe 5.0 specs yet. In fact, it hasn’t even pushed PCIe 4.0 to the limit yet, showing that the next generation of cards could potentially be 4.0 as well–although a little unlikely at this point since the 6.0 spec will favor GPUs quite a bit in other areas.

Also, PCIe 5.0 spec was really created with NVMe and other devices in mind and not so much graphics cards. NVMe technology has zipped along with giant leaps, requiring a lot of power and throughput now that it is blasting past 10,000MBps and making its way toward 20GB/s eventually. Meanwhile, video cards are still swimming in half-way between the shallow and deep in when it comes to PCIe 4.0.

As mentioned though, the coming specs for PCIe 6.0 will be focusing on power management, potentially more reliable cable connectivity (although these are just rumors for now), and more. This spec will have GPUs in mind along with everything else. So although GPUs haven’t even met the needs of PCIe 5.0 yet, they may very likely skip it right over and head toward 6.0 where they will last for years to come like they have the 4.0 spec thanks to the massive leap that 6.0 will offer when it comes to data throughput.

At least, this will likely be the case for the upcoming Blackwell cards coming from NVIDIA (50-series). Although you should only take my prediction as an opinion and nothing else. It makes perfect sense to us, but it doesn’t mean anything beyond that as nothing official has been released by NVIDIA just yet. And at the rate AMD is progressing, its successor to the 7800 and 7900 series may still reside within the PCIe 4.0 specs. That too, is just an opinion based on what makes the most sense. They could very well surprise us with an affordable (for us) blow toward NVIDIA. This would be nice to see as it would create a healthy round of competition for the next-gen models since monitors are moving hard toward HDMI and DisplayPort 2.1 with resolutions up to 4K@240 and into the 8K realm.

For now, the advancements in PCIe have mostly benefited everything else. Allowing us to take advantage of more PCIe channels within a motherboard, thus allowing multiple devices to take advantage and not just a GPU and a few cards. Now motherboards can rock the RTX 4090, 2 to 4 NVMe cards, and 2 to 4 accessory cards. All while playing fair and not disturbing performance so much when some have to share the same channel as something else. It really neat and will only get better when 6.0 releases to motherboards.

So that is the answer to why GPUs seem like they have fallen behind in the PCIe world. The PCIe world has simply shot ahead with more throughput than they require, so there hasn’t been a reason to move forward as they still have plenty of wiggle room where they are, while still keeping consistent with current evolutionary requirements.