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After digging into PCIe gen 4 some more, I was eventually able to get PCIe bifurcation to work on gen 4 link. Here's the reddit post with all the details. But what it seemed to come down to is that the specs for signal loss on gen 4 are a lot stricter than for PCIe gen 3. That also contributes the all the riser cable hoopla that's popped up as of late. I was under the impression that I was at the limit of the signal loss limits because I was going through a riser cable and a second PCB to get an added PCIe slot. Reading online, I found that the only options to reduce signal loss were through higher quality components, or to boost signal with a PCIe redriver or retimer card. This PCIe redriver card from C_Payne seems to be the only one readily available to consumers. Here's a few pictures of it installed in my Ghost S1:[MEDIA=imgur]a/He5XwAG[/MEDIA]Some people reached out to me after with their experiences trying to get bifurcation to work on a gen 4 link and some were able to get it to work without a redriver card. But they also all had their gen 4 cards on the first slot. I thought that was interesting so I ended up switching the slot my 5700XT was in and I can confirm it does work at gen 4 speeds... sometimes.The consistency of the gen 4 link feels a lot more suspect. Sometimes I'll boot up my computer and it'll be at gen 3, other times it'll be at gen 4. Consistency also seems to vary based on what version of the BIOS I'm on or even Radeon Software version. These are all just my gut feelings and I don't really have any numbers to back it up with, but the link speed is definitely not as consistent with the redriver card installed.At the end of the day, I've kinda settled on running my system without the redriver card. Switching around the GPU to the front slot actually works better for my layout since it allows slightly wider water blocks to be used. Instead I'm not playing around with different riser cables and lengths to see if I can improve link consistency. Currently I'm waiting on a shorter riser cable with what looks like it'll allow for better airflow. I've ordered this ADT Link version for Aliexpress and it's slowly on it's way to me.
After digging into PCIe gen 4 some more, I was eventually able to get PCIe bifurcation to work on gen 4 link. Here's the reddit post with all the details. But what it seemed to come down to is that the specs for signal loss on gen 4 are a lot stricter than for PCIe gen 3. That also contributes the all the riser cable hoopla that's popped up as of late. I was under the impression that I was at the limit of the signal loss limits because I was going through a riser cable and a second PCB to get an added PCIe slot. Reading online, I found that the only options to reduce signal loss were through higher quality components, or to boost signal with a PCIe redriver or retimer card. This PCIe redriver card from C_Payne seems to be the only one readily available to consumers. Here's a few pictures of it installed in my Ghost S1:
[MEDIA=imgur]a/He5XwAG[/MEDIA]
Some people reached out to me after with their experiences trying to get bifurcation to work on a gen 4 link and some were able to get it to work without a redriver card. But they also all had their gen 4 cards on the first slot. I thought that was interesting so I ended up switching the slot my 5700XT was in and I can confirm it does work at gen 4 speeds... sometimes.
The consistency of the gen 4 link feels a lot more suspect. Sometimes I'll boot up my computer and it'll be at gen 3, other times it'll be at gen 4. Consistency also seems to vary based on what version of the BIOS I'm on or even Radeon Software version. These are all just my gut feelings and I don't really have any numbers to back it up with, but the link speed is definitely not as consistent with the redriver card installed.
At the end of the day, I've kinda settled on running my system without the redriver card. Switching around the GPU to the front slot actually works better for my layout since it allows slightly wider water blocks to be used. Instead I'm not playing around with different riser cables and lengths to see if I can improve link consistency. Currently I'm waiting on a shorter riser cable with what looks like it'll allow for better airflow. I've ordered this ADT Link version for Aliexpress and it's slowly on it's way to me.
