2017 MBP 13" with TB

[smoldik]

Hi,

two of four Thunderbolt 3 ports (on the right side of laptop) in 13" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (2016 models) used to have reduced speeds.

Is it still true with 2017 models? Or are now all four ports equal in terms of speed?

Does anyone know?

Thanks.

 

[Bending Pixels]

The 2017 13" has only two Thunderbolt ports - per Apple's website

 

[satinsilverem2]

Hi,

two of four Thunderbolt 3 ports (on the right side of laptop) in 13" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (2016 models) used to have reduced speeds.

Is it still true with 2017 models? Or are now all four ports equal in terms of speed?

Does anyone know?

Thanks.

I believe so yes. this is a limitation of the Skylake/ Kaby Lake processors. That being said I use thunderbolt devices on both sets daily and the performance differences are negligible. Im sure they are noticeable differences when using high performance RAID sets but for most people its not an issue.

 

[smoldik]

Ok thanks. So do you think, plugging a 4k monitor with USB 3.1 hub into the right side of MBP won't slow data transfer?

 

[satinsilverem2]

Ok thanks. So do you think, plugging a 4k monitor with USB 3.1 hub into the right side of MBP won't slow data transfer?

no, the monitor will use the USB C alt DisplayPort protocol and the hub will use the usb C data protocol so they won't affect each other.

 

[smoldik]

That is a relief. Because using a right side of connectors makes, ergonomically, much more sense to me.

 

[robvas]

The 2017 13" has only two Thunderbolt ports - per Apple's website

He has a touchbar model which has 4
The non-touchbar model only has 2

 

[ZapNZs]

Ok thanks. So do you think, plugging a 4k monitor with USB 3.1 hub into the right side of MBP won't slow data transfer?

The reduced TB speeds will have no effect on this (unless we are talking about the 5k display, which IIRC Apple advises connecting to the 40 Gbps ports for optimal performance.) However, if you are using a USB hub/dock, and the 4k display is connected to the hub (or the hub is built in to the display), and you are running a 60hz refresh rate (which you probably will want to as IMO 30hz is not fun), you are going to get USB 2.0 data transfer speeds as a consequence of the DisplayPort stream occupying all of the superspeed USB lanes, forcing data to fallback to the highspeed (2.0) lanes.