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Laptops with dedicated Nvidia GPUs aren't also giving you Thunderbolt connectors, are they? Are PC laptops providing Thunderbolt at all?
Yes, if they have an Intel processor (at least recent Intel generations). I am looking at 2020 - 2021 HP Omen laptops, and the ones with Intel processors typically have either 1 Thunderbolt 3 or 1 Thunderbolt 4 port.

Whereas none of the HP Omen 2020 - 2021 laptops with an AMD CPU that I have seen have a Thunderbolt port - they instead have a USB 3-C ports that support DisplayPort 1.4.

My observations are based on what Micro Center and Best Buy have in stock. I would not be surprised if other laptops manufacturers and other stores may have laptops that are different from what I mention above.
 
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The built in SD card reader is unlikely to be as fast as your external one. If you have UHS 2 cards you can be waiting 4x or longer to empty those cards on a UHS 1 reader. The SD reader in the 2012 MBP was also UHS 1 but hopefully this one isn't nearly as crippled as that one was.

I doubt Apple is giving us that bad and SD Card reader, but we'll know in a week or so.

It remains the case though that effectively the new MB Pro's have as many TB ports as the previous generation since you don't have to waste one on powering the laptop.
 
Tech Spec page indicates 60Hz is max refresh rate for external displays across the board:
View attachment 1870474


It's saying up to 3x6k displays on 60 Hz + 1 4k display at 60 Hz. It doesn't say 60 Hz is a limit anywhere here, it says that those 4 displays are the absolute limit.
 
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I doubt Apple is giving us that bad and SD Card reader, but we'll know in a week or so.

It remains the case though that effectively the new MB Pro's have as many TB ports as the previous generation since you don't have to waste one on powering the laptop.
They put in a UHS-I reader and not even a UHS-II reader. So it is already limited in how fast it can go and Sony shooters that haven't switched to CF Express A yet are going to get faster transfers plugging the camera directly into the computer or using an external reader. Canon and Nikon shooters will continue to need our external readers unless you have some consumer APSC model.

I also currently use all four TB3 ports on my 2018. And one of them is not for charging in most scenarios.
 
A hub just splits that 40 Gbps over more devices, a lot of us have devices that consume all or most of the bandwidth of one port each.
One of the things you become aware when you do this enough of is how the TB busses work in different machines. Some machines the ports on one side share a controller and your throughput will be in half unless you copy to a drive on another bus. This was even true on the USB ports too. It was always better to plug your source and target drives to opposite sides of the computer to maximize throughput. Nothing worse than not realizing the ethernet dongle you plugged in to give you a faster connection is being stomped on by the drive you are uploading data from and watching the progress bar surge and stall as controller caches empty and fill.
 
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God these new pros look awful from this angle. And sd card but no usb-a.. meh. Given the pricing it looks like Apple went all out for the graphics community while forgetting about the IT and scientific sector. There is a huge capability gap between the only 16 gb ram, only one display Air and these powerhouse pros.
 
I’d be willing to bet 100% of complainers in here wouldn’t be using HDMI 2.1 and probably don’t even know the difference. And if you’re that pro and using HDMI….. well…

Anyone that wants to do 8K at a decent frame rate and only use one cable will know the difference.
 
One of the things you become aware when you do this enough of is how the TB busses work in different machines. Some machines the ports on one side share a controller and your throughput will be in half unless you copy to a drive on another bus. This was even true on the USB ports too. It was always better to plug your source and target drives to opposite sides of the computer to maximize throughput. Nothing worse than not realizing the ethernet dongle you plugged in to give you a faster connection is being stomped on by the drive you are uploading data from and watching the progress bar surge and stall as controller caches empty and fill.
Aye, I just went for opposites most of the time. I was really hoping for 6 ports, that would have lets me always have my 10 Gbps ethernet plugged in at the same time as my readers and external drives.
 
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I understand apple adding the sd card slot because that was something much needed and asked for since 2016, but who was asking for an hdmi port? A displayport is significantly better than the latest hdmi 2.1 standard, really a waste an extra tb4 port would've been perfect.
 
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If it’s a bandwidth issue like some are speculating, it’s a bit unfortunate since laptops with dedicated Nvidia GPU’s are able to have HDMI 2.1 by connecting the port directly to the GPU.

The nVidia GPU would be using a dedicated HDMI 2.1 controller directly driving the HDMI port so it would be completely bypassing the USB, Thunderbolt (if present) and PCIe controllers.
 
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It's saying up to 3x6k displays on 60 Hz + 1 4k display at 60 Hz. It doesn't say 60 Hz is a limit anywhere here, it says that those 4 displays are the absolute limit.

If it could drive ANY combination of external displays at 120Hz, they'd mention it. The fact that "120Hz" appears nowhere in the video support tech specs is to me a clear indication that it's not supported for external displays.
 
Is there any other way to get 120hz on my lg cx? I have multiple lg cx around the house, I assumed these new Macs had it but was bummed when I saw this post. Like everyone said it’s not a big deal unless you owe multiple high end displays with hdmi 2.1.
 
It's been a very common complaint and/or ask on this forum since the release of the 2016 model.
I guess I was OOTL then, still sucks they didn't go hdmi 2.1 if they wanted to put an hdmi in there. For a 2k laptop, thats disappointing.
 
If it could drive ANY combination of external displays at 120Hz, they'd mention it. The fact that "120Hz" appears nowhere in the video support tech specs is to me a clear indication that it's not supported for external displays.
Why would they mention it, they don't in any other Mac spec sheet. They tell you the maximum which is almost always their own 6k screen and how many of them you can drive on a machine.
 
Anyone have any idea just what exactly the extra GPU cores will do for you if you're not going to be doing heavy video editing or need three external displays?

The M1 Pro has 16 GPU cores. OK, that's more cores than the CPU. So what does this even mean? I've mostly checked out for the past year and I have no idea what any of this really means.
 
If it could drive ANY combination of external displays at 120Hz, they'd mention it. The fact that "120Hz" appears nowhere in the video support tech specs is to me a clear indication that it's not supported for external displays.

The Pro Display XDR maxes out at 60Hz and that is the only 6K display Apple cares about, so that explains that data point.

Not sure how the M1 family of SoCs drive their internal displays. The Thunderbolt 3 protocol does support 4K at 120Hz so Apple could use TB to drive the MBP display at 120Hz for ProMotion and the external limitation could just be a software limitation (lack of driver support in macOS). If so, and Apple say releases a future Thunderbolt Display with ProMotion then the driver support could be added to drive said display at 120Hz.
 
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No Bluetooth 5.2, WIFI 6, hdmi 2…

Anyone know the specs on the SD card reader? I'm actually pretty interested in that. If it's an old spec SD card reader, I'd find that really lame. One of the reasons why I didn't miss having all these extra ports is because external accessories quickly outstrip the built in ports if you're staying ahead of average.
 
Why would they mention it, they don't in any other Mac spec sheet. They tell you the maximum which is almost always their own 6k screen and how many of them you can drive on a machine.

Yet they specify 60Hz there, so clearly they consider the refresh rate important for users to know. So why would they not mention the max combination if you want all your external displays running at 120Hz (if that were possible)? Makes no sense, especially when the target market here is pro users.
 
Anyone have any idea just what exactly the extra GPU cores will do for you if you're not going to be doing heavy video editing or need three external displays?

The M1 Pro has 16 GPU cores. OK, that's more cores than the CPU. So what does this even mean? I've mostly checked out for the past year and I have no idea what any of this really means.

Any application that needs TFLOPs of performance (video editing, rendering, etc.) will benefit from all the cores you can throw at it (provided the application is optimized to take advantage of them).
 
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Anyone know the specs on the SD card reader? I'm actually pretty interested in that. If it's an old spec SD card reader, I'd find that really lame. One of the reasons why I didn't miss having all these extra ports is because external accessories quickly outstrip the built in ports if you're staying ahead of average.
UHS-I SDXC. So it is pretty slow and old. It isn't UHS-II.
 
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