Процесор Core Ultra / Intel
Delays associated with Intel Core 200S processors slow down M.2 ports on motherboards, such as the Z890, and prevent SSDs from achieving high data transfer rates.
Specialized site The SSD Review found a flaw during testing when a PCIe 5.0 SSD with a possible speed of 14GB/s achieved only 12GB/s on the Arrow Lake test bench. The drive review states that the new processors have a bottleneck on the PCIe lines allocated to the motherboard’s M.2 slots, resulting in a reduction in throughput of about 2 GB/s compared to previous generation motherboards.
After contacting board manufacturers and Intel, it was discovered that the problem was specific to Arrow Lake processors. The publication was unable to find Z890 motherboards that work with PCIe 5.0 SSDs at speeds over 14 GB/s. At the same time, boards based on the Z790 chipset (previous generation) do this without any problems.
«In fact, we were unable to find a single M.2 slot on the Z890 Gen5 motherboard that delivers 14GB/s sequential reads from a Gen5 SSD», — the testers note.
In particular, the tests demonstrated problems with Samsung 9100 Pro and Micron 4600 SSDs connected to two systems with Z890 and Z790 motherboards. On the Z890, the drives reached peak speeds of only 12.3 Gbps in the main and auxiliary M.2 slots of the board. On the Z790, however, both SSDs reached the expected 14.3GB/s. The publication also tested both drives on a separate Asus Hyper M.2 PCIe card — they also reached 14.3GB/s, confirming that the problem is only with the physical M.2 slots of the Z890 motherboards.
When the M.2 slot was bypassed with an additional card, sequential read/write performance improved, but random operation performance remained below the Z790 level. This indicates that the latency issue persists even during the bypass.
Further analysis confirmed that such performance limitations are not related to any specific motherboard manufacturer. Asus and ASRock independently replicated the results and explained that the problem is caused by the latency of the I/O Extender component in the Intel processor circuitry.
«Intel confirms that the PCIe Lanes 21-24 Gen5 root ports on Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors may experience increased latency compared to PCIe Lanes 1-16 Gen5 root ports due to the longer data path between the chips. However, any changes are dependent on the specific workload and capabilities of the PCIe» endpoint,” The SSD Review writes.
Website Tom’s Hardware notes that it is not the first serious performance issue with Arrow Lake. Intel’s transition from single-chip design to chip layout is tangible affects productivity. Intel’s previous-generation flagships, the Core i9-13900K and i9-14900K, are typically significantly faster than the Core Ultra 9 285K in gaming workloads, according to the site’s testing.