I currently run what I would consider a pretty decent workstation/server setup:
- ASRock WRX80 Creator R2.0 motherboard
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5955WX
- 8 x 32 GB Kingston Server Premier 3200MT/s DDR4 ECC
- 2 x 4 TB WD SN850x
- 1 x RTX 5090 (Founders Edition)
Since this platform is limited to PCIe Gen 4, I am wondering how much performance I would realistically gain by switching to a newer PCIe Gen 5 consumer platform.
Since DDR5 ECC is extremely expensive, moving to a newer workstation platform is not possible; so if I were to move, I would be looking at a consumer-grade setup instead, something like Z790, 13700K, with 4 × 48 GB DDR5 UDIMM RAM at around 5200 MHz.
I was also considering adding a second GPU to my existing WRX80 setup. However, if the GPUs would be heavily bandwidth-limited due to PCIe Gen 4, I am not sure whether adding another GPU would actually give me a meaningful performance gain.
So I am basically trying to decide between:
- Keeping the current WRX80/Threadripper Pro system and possibly adding a second GPU.
- Moving to a newer PCIe Gen 5 consumer platform for better single-GPU performance.
What would you do in my situation?