AMD’s control circuit B350 for Ryzen lacks support for Nvidia SLI

The launch of the AMD Ryzen is only days away and the processors can now be pre-booked, as well as the associated AM4 motherboards. As a result, more information about both motherboards and control circuits has been found out, where one thing that distinguishes the X370 and B350 is support for several contemporary graphics cards.

Support for AMD Crossfire and Nvidia SLI is available on the top model X370, but for B350 only has support for Crossfire. This is because Nvidia only provides support for SLI if both graphics cards can be connected via at least each PCI Express 3.0 x8, a capability that AMD has chosen to limit to the X370.

The B350 intermediate circuit still supports Radeon graphics cards in Crossfire, but not without compromise. The control circuit lacks the ability to share the processor’s integrated PCI Express 3.0 x16 channels. This means that the second graphics card can be connected via PCI Express 2.0 x4 on the control circuit, which in turn communicates with the processor through four channels PCI Express 3.0.

The fact that AMD has chosen to restrict functionality in the B350 and thereby omit support for SLI may be a way of squeezing costs in the lower segments. Although Crossfire is possible with the B350, it is not certain that it is a good solution, as graphics card two not only has one-eighth of the bandwidth compared to the first, but also gets extra latency as it needs to take a detour through the control circuit.

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AMD Ryzen and the control circuits X370 and B350 will be launched on March 2.

Source: Computerbase.de