Gigabyte's new lineup of B850 chipset motherboards brings PCI-E 5.0 support out of the box, offering great performance for modern systems.
From the Affordable Gaming Series to the AORUS Family, Every Model of Gigabyte B850 is Packed with a PCI-E 5.0 interface
With the launch of AMD 800 series motherboards, motherboard manufacturers, especially Gigabyte, have taken steps to offer powerful features out of the box, irrespective of the price tags. While the PCI-E 5.0 interface is something you will find on many 800-series motherboards, Gigabyte has made sure that you can leverage PCI-E 5.0's potential even on its cheapest offering.
The company launched its B850 chipset motherboards a while ago and delivers PCI-E 5.0 support for every B850 model, starting from the affordable and entry-level Gaming Series all the way to the mid-range AORUS B850 models. This allows users to build a powerful gaming/productivity system that is future-proof and can support PCI-E 5.0 graphics cards without any worries.
Understanding PCI-E 5.0
The PCI-E (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) is a high-speed interface, developed for expansion cards such as GPUs and other components such as network cards and SSDs. The aim of every new generation of PCI-E interface is to enhance performance drastically, and with every generation, we are looking at almost two times the bandwidth compared to the previous standard.
The PCI-E 5.0 was introduced in 2019 and took over the PCI-E 4.0 on modern motherboards such as AM5 and LGA 1851 for AMD and Intel platforms. However, the PCI-E 5.0 interface may not be present on every motherboard model and may bring only PCI-E 4.0. As GPU manufacturers such as NVIDIA and AMD have released their latest GPU families, like the RTX 50 and RX 9000 series, respectively, with a PCI-E 5.0 interface, many motherboard makers have already started deploying PCI-E 5.0 support on their latest motherboards.
The PCI-E 5.0 interface delivers twice the bandwidth of PCI-E 4.0, offering up to 32 GT/s per lane and a bandwidth of about 128 GB/s for the PCI-E 5.0 x16 slot. This unlocks the full potential of the PCI-E 5.0 devices such as graphics cards, including the latest RTX 50 series Blackwell GPUs, RDNA 4 RX 9000 GPUs, and PCI-E 5.0 NVMe SSDs. While currently, the difference isn't that noticeable, in the near future, with faster components, it will become more evident.
Gigabyte B850 Brings PCI-E 5.0 Interface for Superior Performance
Gigabyte is bringing this interface to its B850 motherboards for both the graphics cards/expansion cards and NVMe SSDs. Not only does PCI-E 5.0 promise enhanced performance in applications and games, but it also brings reduced latency. PCI-E 5.0 helps in the transmission of more data between the CPU and GPU, reducing bottlenecks, which helps achieve better graphics performance, which is beneficial for high-resolution gaming and intensive graphical operations such as 3D rendering.
Furthermore, the PCI-E 5.0 interface also helps Solid State Drives to achieve higher read and write speeds, and with many storage manufacturers now releasing PCI-E 5.0 compatible SSDs, it's easier to reach up to 14.8 GB/s of read and up to 13.4 GB/s write speeds on devices like the Samsung 9100 Pro series.
Many SSD makers are now focusing more on PCI-E 5.0 storage drives than PCI-E 4.0, which makes having PCI-E 5.0 support a no-brainer, and will be the norm in the coming days. This makes the Gigabyte B850 motherboards ideal for future-proofing your build, at least when it comes to PCI-E 5.0 components.
Gigabyte B850 Boards are Packed with Robust PCI-E x16 and M.2 Slots
The Gigabyte B850 chipset motherboards bring at least one PCI-E 5.0 x16 slot for GPUs and at least one PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot for SSDs. There can be many more PCI-E x16 and M.2 slots depending on the model, which at least bring PCI-E 4.0 support apart from the primary ones.
Some motherboards like the B850 AORUS Elite WiFi7 can bring PCI-E 5.0 support for up to two NVMe SSDs when users use the latest Ryzen 9000 series processors or even the previous-gen Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 CPUs. Then there are upper mid-range motherboards like the B850 AI TOP, exclusively crafted for leading performance, which delivers two M.2 slots with support for up to 4x PCI-E 5.0 M.2 SSDs.
Along with such high-end specs, Gigabyte B850 motherboards can support up to 256 GB of memory with up to 8600 MT/s speed and support both CPU and memory overclocking. This makes the Gigabyte B850 lineup ideal for high-end gaming and productivity PC builds that can leverage the performance of high-performance CPUs, GPUs, memory, and storage devices.
Some Gigabyte B850 models also bring ultra-durable PCI-E Armor called PCI-E UD Slot X that reinforces the PCI-E x16 slot with a metal backplate and helps in supporting heavy graphics cards such as custom RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs. Apart from fast and reliable slots for the expansion cards, the Gigabyte B850 motherboards also bring modern connectivity such as Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5 GbE LAN.
There are currently over a dozen Gigabyte B850 motherboard models under the AROUS, Eagle, and Gaming series, featuring various designs, aesthetics, and features, available on the Gigabyte Amazon store. All of these motherboards are ideal for the latest graphics cards and leading NVMe SSDs while remaining light on your pocket.
