PCIe 5.0 Bandwidth Impact on Content Creation GPUs: A Deep Dive

With PCIe 5.0 GPUs now available, the impact of bandwidth on content creation applications is a key question. Testing reveals that in DaVinci Resolve, PCIe 5.0 x16, x8, and 4.0 x16 perform similarly, but reducing bandwidth to 4.0 x4 or lower significantly impacts performance. After Effects shows less impact, while Blender and Octane rendering are virtually unaffected. LLM benchmarks show limited bandwidth effects, but multi-GPU and system RAM interplay should be considered. In summary, for content creation, running a GPU at x8 on a PCIe 5.0 motherboard is usually fine, but beware of the 4.0 x4 bandwidth limitation on lower-end motherboards.