eGPU for example. You can get a desktop RTX 3090, put it in eGPU enclosure and connect to your thin and light laptop over USB-C, and suddenly you will have 1 to 1 performance of this card in your laptop. Modern eGPU enclosures are less efficient and you are loosing between 20-35% of the card performance due to T3 limitation of 40GB/s.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Thunderbolt 5 Could Double Bandwidth to 80 Gbps, Intel Leak Suggests
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The new M1 Macs have Thunderbolt 4 but Apple removed the number in documentation and marketing because they are not paying Intel for the license, calling it “Thunderbolt / USB 4” (wink wink). The chip is the same. The functions are the same. The speed is the same. In fact, you can buy Thunderbolt 4 hubs for it sold by other companies. There are some features Apple is limiting via software at this time but that may quietly change at any time.
I agree, with the EGPU, I love my MacBook Pro 16 with a EGPU box and a 3080 card. So if Apple has one or two more MacBook pro's with an Intel processor I might go this way. Hoping Apple does a Mac Mini Pro with PCI slots and m.2. But if Apple does not, this will still make it very good to do Bootcamp and Windows 11 next year.
Excellent post. The only thing that I would add would be the frustration of having certain peripherals not work well through hubs, regardless of speed. Audio interfaces come to mind - if you need low latency, you don't want to plug those devices into thunderbolt hubs. So again, I would rather have multiple ports (of various speeds) rather than one or two "Master ports".
I will be nice to see even faster SDD data transfer with Thunderbolt 5. My Thunderbolt 3 SSD rocks as people find out you can not put a cheap SSD into a Playstation 5, as people said would happen 8 months ago. And you have to use a Samsung or Fire CUDA for performance for the PS5. So my Thunderbolt 4TB SSD is great and runs like a champion and is still cheaper storage for 4TB with Thunderbolt 3 machine 
Last edited:
I would agree, but hoping Apple comes out with a Mac mini Pro with a couple of PCI slots so You could add a Thunderbolt 5 card to the box and get more speed to the PCI bus.
Just remember that a Patent Office Commissioner once stated that “Everything has already been invented”.
There will always be a latency issue no matter how fast the transfers get. Direct PCIe connection would always be better.
eGPU would still stall at say 95% effectiveness due to the latency.
Agreed, USB-5, USB-10, USB-20 and USB-40 would all be far more useful. So too would limiting USB-5 and USB-10 to USB-A connector hardware ,
True - once you go beyond email and Twitter, audio/MIDI are relatively common applications for Macs and what you need for that is a bunch of reliable, hub-free top-level USB2 ports. OK, so a pro studio might go for a $2000 Thunderbolt interface with 2x16 or more channels, but for smaller fry that's massive overkill.
...OK you can only have so many ports on a computer, but the problem really comes when you have to block your precious USB ports with things like displays and chargers that don't need the USB/PCIe lanes consumed by that port.
Well, in theory, a Thunderbolt driven hub could offer multiple USB2/3 ports driven by their own PCIe-to-USB controllers which should be almost as good as native ports... but then you're buying an expensive dock just to get back to "should be almost as good".
Nothing wrong with one or two "master ports" for versatility provided they don't come at the expense of other ports. Best solution for laptops - where you can't just have a PCIe slot - was PCMCIA cards, then ExpressCards, which (e.g.) allowed me to add USB 3 to my 2011 17" MBP. C.f. the Thunderbolt 1 port on that machine which was as much use as a chocolate teapot because it was also the only external display output. The 2012 re-design fixed that with a much more sensible variety of ports (only 2 USB but the other ports for power, HDMI, Thunderbolt, SD left those free for USB) ... then 2016 broke it again.
I’m still using it too, on my 2012 iMac that still easily does what need to do. There are only 3 reasons II’m still using thunderbolt one technology
now own own an M1 laptop, battery life, SSD speed and the heat generated is low enough to use i while it’s on my lap. 2 monitor support and limited TB are only just barely tolerable because of those 3 advantages.
Last edited:
...and if you were expecting them to at least be consistent and rename USB 3.2 Gen 1&2 to USB 4 Gen 1&2, and call the new Thunderbolt-based protocol USB 4 Gen 3 x1/x2... prepare to be confused further. Add Thunderbolt 4 to the mix (sort-of USB 4 with all the options but only sort-of), mix in a pinch of the USB4 ports on the M1 being sort-of Thunderbolt 3-and-a-half (because they don't support two displays...?) then try and distinguish between USB 3 alt mode, USB 3 tunnelling and TB->PCIe->USB3... and and it's time to give up and become an off-grid spoon whittler.
Seriously, guys - when you've got 3-4 completely different protocols (USB 1/2 - which still need their own dedicated wires, USB 3 and "USB4/sorta-not-quite-Thunderbolt") and 3+ different connectors (USB A/B and C) just don't call them all USB. Talk about "I am Groot"...
I'm typing this from my 2012 Macbook Air which has: Magsafe charging, headphone jack, two USB-A ports, an HDMI video port, a thunderbolt or lightning port (not sure which--I have used it once), and an SD card port. All those ports take up less than 1/3 of the side of the machine (and this is one of the smallest laptops Apple makes).
There is PLENTY of room for ports, and USB has indeed stopped being universal after USB3. I would love a computer with a high speed port for video (that's what the thunderbolt/lightning is, along with the HDMI), a couple of ports for lower speed peripherals (the USB-A), and a couple of higher speed ports (this could be USB-c). But instead, we get this one size fits all "you must do it this way" approach that limits the hardware and requires the use of bulky dongles.
It is far cheaper for manufacturers to put in a $0.75 port in an aluminum body than it is manufacture some new state of the art USB5 device with all its associated licensing costs, and then force everyone to buy adapters to connect their legacy products.
Honestly one of the best things Apple ever invented was Airdrop (would be great if there was some Mac-to-PC protocol for wireless transfers) because it eliminated the need to plug in, say, a USB thumbdrive, for certain file transfers. But yeah we need more ports not less! With Jony Ive gone I wonder if we will finally see a return to rational port design.
No. see: https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www...upgrade-gaming-accessories-thunderbolt-4.html :
The M1 machines can support two displays: but on the laptops & iMac, one output is hard-wired to the built-in display, and on the Mini one is hard-wired to HDMI. That leaves only one display available via Thunderbolt. They don't qualify as Thunderbolt 4. There may be other reasons, but TB4 will at least have to wait for the M1X/whatever.
So you are saying that audio interfaces need to be plugged in directly to the computer and not true any hub?
There has never been a time when someone did not find an application for more bandwidth, more speed, more capacity.
USB-C Power Delivery Hits 240W with Extended Power Range
USB-C can charge up to 240W in near future.
I use three 4K 24” monitors. If I were to use 3 of the screens in the M1 iMac, that would be 13.5K wide. Double up the height, and that would be 5K pixels tall. I could see myself using a single curved 13.5k x 5k display at 10bit color and 120Hz*. That would require about 8 times the bandwidth of my 4K TV which saturates a 40Gbps connection. (That’s without any Display Stream Compression)
*and higher bit color and refresh rate would be even better.