PCIe 4.0 vs PCIe 5.0 gaming: Should you upgrade your motherboard in 2025?

PCIe 5.0 and 4.0 are both uniquely placed in the market: while motherboards based on the older standard are readily selling, most current-generation graphics cards are pushing the latest version. If you're looking to upgrade to an RTX 50 or RX 9000 series video card, an important question to address is whether spending the premium on a Gen 5 motherboard is worthwhile. This is a bigger problem for budget systems with limited headroom for a costlier part.

In this article, we will look at the performance differences you can expect by going up generation numbers in the PCIe interface. We'll consider gaming performance as a proxy.

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PCIe 4.0 vs PCIe 5.0: How big is the difference in gaming?

Modern motherboards and GPUs are pushing for Gen 5.0 exclusivity (Image via Asus)

Choosing between the PCIe standards becomes more important on budget cards. Most of the recent launches, such as the RTX 5060 and RX 9060 XT, are only based on an x8 interface, which means you lose twice as much with PCIe 4.0: on bandwidth and bus width. Let's dissect the specs of these bus standards before delving into fine-grained performance differences.

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Specs comparison

In terms of specs, PCIe 5.0 doubles the transfer speeds of the older standard. While it was introduced as early as 2019, just two years after Gen 4 debuted, the technology is only being widely adopted lately with the release of the latest graphics cards.

Gen 5 supports a maximum of 32 GT/s in transfer rate, with a 4 GB/s bandwidth per lane. That's double that of the last generation. Moreover, bandwidth across every link (x4, x8, x16) has all been doubled. Gen 5 also retains backward compatibility with older standards, which will continue to run with reduced speeds.

Here's a look at the specs sheets of the two standards:

Specification	PCIe Gen 4	PCIe Gen 5
Release Year	2017	2019
Transfer Rate	16 GT/s (gigatransfers per second)	32 GT/s (gigatransfers per second)
Bandwidth per Lane	~2 GB/s	~4 GB/s
x4 Link Bandwidth	~8 GB/s	~16 GB/s
x8 Link Bandwidth	~16 GB/s	~32 GB/s
x16 Link Bandwidth	~32 GB/s	~64 GB/s
Encoding Scheme	128b/130b	128b/130b
Latency	Similar to Gen 3, slightly better	Similar to Gen 4, slight improvements
Power Efficiency	Improved over Gen 3	Similar to Gen 4, higher power draw possible at full speed
Typical Use Cases	High-end GPUs, NVMe SSDs, networking	Next-gen GPUs, AI accelerators, ultra-fast NVMe SSDs
Backward Compatibility	With Gen 3 and earlier	With Gen 4, Gen 3, and earlier

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Performance comparison

Budget GPUs are often limited to x8 and x4 buses, further limiting their bandwidth (Image via MSI)

Given that the bus standard generation directly meddles with the speed at which a GPU can communicate with the CPU, it's important to look at gaming FPS to get an idea of how much performance is lost if you dial back from PCIe 5.0 to 4.0 and 3.0.

Here's a look at how framerates vary on the same graphics card (RTX 5050) based on which bus standard is used by the motherboard. We sourced these numbers from the YouTube channel Testing Games.

	PCIe Gen 3.0	PCIe Gen 4.0	PCIe Gen 5.0
God of War: Ragnarök	84.2 FPS	86.7 FPS	87.3 FPS
Red Dead Redemption 2	67.9 FPS	70.6 FPS	70.7 FPS
CYBERPUNK 2077	51.1 FPS	55.2 FPS	55.8 FPS
Ghost of Tsushima	65.4 FPS	65.7 FPS	65.5 FPS
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2	58.8 FPS	59.9 FPS	61.1 FPS
The Last of Us Part II	71.3 FPS	76.6 FPS	77.4 FPS
Forza Horizon 5	87.2 FPS	91.6 FPS	92.7 FPS
Horizon Forbidden West	62.4 FPS	62.9 FPS	63.2 FPS
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II	49.5 FPS	52.8 FPS	53.9 FPS
Doom: The Dark Ages	51.2 FPS	54.1 FPS	54.6 FPS

Moving from PCIe Gen 3.0 to 4.0 gives a tangible jump in performance: 4.3%. However, choosing between PCIe 5.0 and 4.0 won't make much of a difference as the FPS gap is just 0.9% (less than the margin of error of 1%). This is more true for budget GPUs like the RTX 5050 that are limited by bigger factors such as rasterization capabilities.

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If you're building a budget or mid-range rig in 2025, choosing the cheaper Gen 4.0 motherboard won't make much of a difference. Some of these offerings have been handsomely discounted lately, now that they're being phased out. Given that PCIe 4.0 provides most of the practical benefits while PCIe 5.0 is more future-focused, we recommend opting for the former.