Haha, this is hilarious, I have our engineering sitting next to me, he said not to reply to this thread because it is insane to engage in these arguments. Anyway our company is a professional professional video company, the engineer next to me writes video drivers from scratch, and I have been doing tv and film post production pipelines since the 90s. I know what thunderbolt 3 is and I know what thunderbolt 2 is, and I know what USB 3.0 was, and is now called USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Speed up to 5Gbps) and USB 3.1 is now called USB 3.1 Gen 2 (Speed up to 10Gbps) I know what a USBc connection is, and that it doesn't determine its bandwidth. We are tech savvy!! No homework needed. I am well aware of what a connection port versus bandwidth is. The USBC hubs on the market are not TB3, they are using USBC connections for USBC hubs, they are not TB3 hubs using USBC connection. That is my point. The TB3 hubs using USBC connections are not compatible with the 2016 MacBook Pro, that was our problem when testing these laptops. We are still waiting for the TB3 hubs using the USBC connection, as a hub, that uses the full Tb3 bandwidth.
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Dock Wars: OWC Usb C dock vs Thunderbolt 3 dock
- Thread starter joejoejoe
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Haha, this is hilarious, I have our engineering sitting next to me, he said not to reply to this thread because it is insane to engage in these arguments. Anyway our company is a professional professional video company, the engineer next to me writes video drivers from scratch, and I have been doing tv and film post production pipelines since the 90s. I know what thunderbolt 3 is and I know what thunderbolt 2 is, and I know what USB 3.0 was, and is now called USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Speed up to 5Gbps) and USB 3.1 is now called USB 3.1 Gen 2 (Speed up to 10Gbps) I know what a USBc connection is, and that it doesn't determine its bandwidth. We are tech savvy!! No homework needed. I am well aware of what a connection port versus bandwidth is. The USBC hubs on the market are not TB3, they are using USBC connections for USBC hubs, they are not TB3 hubs using USBC connection. That is my point. The TB3 hubs using USBC connections are not compatible with the 2016 MacBook Pro, that was our problem when testing these laptops. We are still waiting for the TB3 hubs using the USBC connection, as a hub, that uses the full Tb3 bandwidth.
Once again: USB-C is NOT the same thing as USB because it is no more than a connector and cable. The fact that a hub/dock/device uses USB-C says very little. You still don't know what protocol is being used.
What you actually meant to say is that most (yes "most" because there currently are a few Thunderbolt 3 docks on the market although those do not use the Texas Instruments Thunderbolt chip that is officially TB certified by Intel so support is iffy) of the USB-C docks (not hubs!) that are currently available are USB-only. That isn't the real problem though, the fact that those docks are USB3.0-only is what is the real problem because USB3.0 has half the bandwidth of USB3.1 Gen 2. The manufacturers probably did this to make sure that their dock is fully compatible with any of the devices sporting a USB-C connector that uses USB because many of those use USB3.0 (which is usually named as being USB3.1 and sometimes with the correct name of USB3.1 Gen 1).
You are forgetting to ask (the right) questions though. It is nice to have a bandwidth of 40Gbps but what are you going to do with it? Gigabit ethernet is only 1Gbps max, keyboards, mice and many other input devices operate at USB1.1 speeds, printers are at USB2.0 and so on. The only thing most people are using which is actually capable of using up a lot of bandwidth would be the display, especially if it is a 4k (or even 5k) one (again, read the picture, it's right there). What we've seen with the very first Thunderbolt docks a few years ago were consumers wanting cheaper alternatives because they didn't need the full bandwidth of Thunderbolt which at the time was only 10Gbps, the same as USB3.1 Gen 2. The only difference between then and now is the amount of 4k displays being used; it has gone up so there is now more need for a bit more bandwidth than back then. Still, most people don't seem to be using such displays and the current USB-C docks are still capable of driving a 4k display so why change to a version with more bandwidth and thus a higher cost? Or differently put: why would one buy a higher bandwidth version of dock when all you want to do is connect a display, keyboard, mouse, network cable and an external drive? USB3.0 has enough bandwidth for that and those docks are already available.
From what I've seen with actual TB3 docks, I'm not very impressed. They have more bandwidth but the same ports as my Thunderbolt 1 dock and they even cost more. I'd rather see some more differentiation with docks that can be used to drive a 4k display or 2 and docks that have more (high end) ports. That and more displays with built-in dock. I think there would be a lot of people wanting something like the average Thunderbolt 2 dock built into a 24"-ish 4k display. With the current tech, that would be the ultimate dock (you can't have it in 5k version, not enough bandwidth).
What you actually meant to say is that most (yes "most" because there currently are a few Thunderbolt 3 docks on the market although those do not use the Texas Instruments Thunderbolt chip that is officially TB certified by Intel so support is iffy) of the USB-C docks (not hubs!) that are currently available are USB-only. That isn't the real problem though, the fact that those docks are USB3.0-only is what is the real problem because USB3.0 has half the bandwidth of USB3.1 Gen 2. The manufacturers probably did this to make sure that their dock is fully compatible with any of the devices sporting a USB-C connector that uses USB because many of those use USB3.0 (which is usually named as being USB3.1 and sometimes with the correct name of USB3.1 Gen 1).
You are forgetting to ask (the right) questions though. It is nice to have a bandwidth of 40Gbps but what are you going to do with it? Gigabit ethernet is only 1Gbps max, keyboards, mice and many other input devices operate at USB1.1 speeds, printers are at USB2.0 and so on. The only thing most people are using which is actually capable of using up a lot of bandwidth would be the display, especially if it is a 4k (or even 5k) one (again, read the picture, it's right there). What we've seen with the very first Thunderbolt docks a few years ago were consumers wanting cheaper alternatives because they didn't need the full bandwidth of Thunderbolt which at the time was only 10Gbps, the same as USB3.1 Gen 2. The only difference between then and now is the amount of 4k displays being used; it has gone up so there is now more need for a bit more bandwidth than back then. Still, most people don't seem to be using such displays and the current USB-C docks are still capable of driving a 4k display so why change to a version with more bandwidth and thus a higher cost? Or differently put: why would one buy a higher bandwidth version of dock when all you want to do is connect a display, keyboard, mouse, network cable and an external drive? USB3.0 has enough bandwidth for that and those docks are already available.
From what I've seen with actual TB3 docks, I'm not very impressed. They have more bandwidth but the same ports as my Thunderbolt 1 dock and they even cost more. I'd rather see some more differentiation with docks that can be used to drive a 4k display or 2 and docks that have more (high end) ports. That and more displays with built-in dock. I think there would be a lot of people wanting something like the average Thunderbolt 2 dock built into a 24"-ish 4k display. With the current tech, that would be the ultimate dock (you can't have it in 5k version, not enough bandwidth).
I work in film and TV post production. The bandwidth will be used. On top of that Apple has pushed to get rid of PCIe ports, something we saw with the new MacPro. Our network is Fibre, we have to have external broadcast boxes and eventually eGPU's for CUDA rendering. Right now we use a CUBIX xpander with Multiple GPU's. I would love to see something like that in a laptop, something using the TB3, multiple eGPU's not just one. We are waiting for the only future Apple is pushing, TB3, to catch up with our needs.
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I wonder if the ACD 27" (mini DisplayPort) works if i Connect it to a Thunderbolt 2 Dock and use the TB2 TB3 adapter from Apple.
You are going to need CUDA drives for that to work. Do you now if Apple provide these for the new processors and hardware? It would great if they did, because I would love to be able to plug in a Nvidia K80/P100 or Google TF eBox for my ML work.
All drivers up to Maxwell work great, light years past ATI/AMD or whatever its called now. As for PASCAL?? Not so much, we are all still waiting.. Nvidia and Apple are not friends at the moment, and Tim Cooks universe has nothing to do with modern GPU's.. Tim is more concerned with iOS and iPhones and ilifestyle and iwatches and iPokemon and iNintendo and iNike and iRunning. Modern computing is not Tim Cook and Apples thing, and it might never be again.
PCI is loooooong gone with any manufacturer now, I think you mean PCIe here
Apple wasn't the only one pushing it though, there have been others too. Mind you, Intel is the one that will benefit the most from a push to Thunderbolt.That's a very generic term though. You can have fibre networks for storage which usually is FibreChannel. With fibre it really depends on the equipment used because some won't surpass Thunderbolt speeds whereas others are the exact opposite.
The other thing is how you design the system. You can have locally attached GPUs but you can also go the route of dedicated machines or complete cabinets with CUDA GPUs (Nvidia even offers those as a service).
Indeed. I think Thunderbolt 3 is the first Thunderbolt version where we get to see these cool things. eGPU is now officially supported by Intel and it seems to be working in Windows (although there still are quite some issues). It probably is inevitable for Apple but they might be waiting until the Thunderbolt 3 market is a bit more mature and the biggest issues of the eGPU setups are solved. I think this year is going to be quite interesting.
That will work. It is exactly how I have my MBP set up here. Display is connected to the second TB port on the dock with a DisplayPort to mini-DisplayPort cable and the dock itself is connected to the MBP with the TB2-TB3 adapter. My dock is a Thunderbolt 1 dock though but that shouldn't make any difference here.
The reason that this works is quite simple: it is the dock that encapsulates the DisplayPort stream as well as all the other stuff (ethernet, USB, PCIe) into Thunderbolt which is then transferred to the computer. The computer then undoes the encapsulation. In other words between the dock and computer there is only Thunderbolt but behind the dock and the computer there are all the other protocols. The TB2-TB3 adapter is not able to do the encapsulation, it only is able to transfer the Thunderbolt data.